


No Harm Done

by alekszova



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Deviant Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Love Triangles (sort of), M/M, Memory Loss, Pacifist Markus (Detroit: Become Human), Temporary Character Death, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, angst in the present, fluff in the past... sometimes, the gavin/connor isn't as brief as i thought
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-06 03:59:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 68,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15186272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alekszova/pseuds/alekszova
Summary: Connor has died more times than he cares to count and struggles with the sudden pain attached to these memories now that he is a deviant.Markus has died once, and it is a million times worse than any of them.





	1. No harm done.

**Author's Note:**

> "I want to scream at Nesbitt that it hurt, that every scar I have hurt, and my body is covered in scars that have healed quickly but they all hurt, and I can't say about any of them, 'No harm done.'" -- Half Wild / Sally Green

He remembers every single one of his deaths.

If they can, in fact, be called _deaths._

He thinks that they qualify, even if he has been brought back every time.

Before he had felt no pain. He had died and then jolted awake and nothing else was ever an issue.

But now his dreams are filled with blue blood and he wakes up screaming and trying to stop a nonexistant bleed or shove the thirium pump back into his chest. He has to remind himself that he is _alive_ now, that there was _no harm done._

But it isn’t true—

Is it?

 

 

The first death he remembers is on that rooftop, the PL600 and that little girl and the gun pointed at her, then him.

The pain of the bullet grazing his arm had barely even hurt. Not with what comes after.

Not with him standing opposite of Daniel, trying his best and failing to save Emma.

The thing about a bullet entering his head—

The thing that differs between him and humans and other androids—

He was built to last a little longer. He was built to have those few seconds before uploading everything he possibly could to the next RK800 model that would take his place.

So when the memory comes flooding back to him, when it comes attached with all the pain that his machinery had done it’s best to shut down, it is excrutiating.

And he wakes up lingering in those few seconds of absolute agony trying to reconcile reality and memory.

It helps, having Markus beside him. It helps having Markus wake up, brush his hands away from the spot where the damage had been dealt, press a gentle kiss there and remind him that it is in the past and that he is okay now.

He doesn’t have to forget, he simply has to accept.

No rewinds. No redos. Choices made and set in stone. Dealing with them is the important part.

 

 

He often wonders if there are other Connor models out there—surely CyberLife didn’t start production on the next one in line once he died. Surely there were a few already made, ready for a memory to be implanted in their heads and return to work.

He wonders if they exist—if they woke up—what they are like now. Are they a blank slate? Are they some fragmented version of him from the last time he uploaded his memory to CyberLife’s servers? Where are they?

Does he want to see them?

 

 

Nothing in the entire world could compare to this.

The feeling of having Markus at his side, of smiling so hard that they can barely keep their lips pressed together, of being with the one person in the entire world he could never consider leaving.

Of whispering how much he loves him when they walk down the street, hands entwined at their sides.

 

 

The first time he saw Markus was in that CyberLife tower, skin removed or hidden underneath a cap when a camera can’t quite get the right angle.

But the first time he _sees_ him, Connor is standing opposite with a gun in his hand, struggling to decide whether or not to fire.

In the end, of course, he cannot.

He _could not._

 

 

Nothing in the entire world could compare to this.

The feeling of having Markus weight pressed against his body, of trying to keep himself from screaming because he needs Markus’ last memory to not be of his terror, of his trauma, of being with the one person in the entire world he would never have thought would leave him.

Of whispering how much he loves him when his hands are pressed to Markus’ abdomen, trying his best to hold in the blue blood.

  

* * *

 

 

He does not remember death.

They do, in fact, tell him it was death.

They think it qualifies. He does not.

Because he remembers nothing of who he was before.

This is not a revival. It is not a second chance. He is a completely different person. That was not _his_ death, it belongs to whoever the Markus before him was.

It is simply like being switched on for the very first time. He doesn’t even believe that he was anything before this moment, that he is shiny and new and ready to become something.

But now he is being told, being pleaded with, that he was someone before this. They show him pictures of a hundred people. They tell him _this is Carl, this is North, this is Josh, this is Connor, this is **you.**_

But it isn’t true—

Is it?

 

 

He has no first memory. He has nothing. He is a blank slate that they try to find a home for.

None of them can decide where to put Markus.

Does he go back to where he was originally meant at Carl’s home where he will be alone in that big house?

Will he return to the home of fragile, broken Connor who no one can decide if he can handle his presence?

They ask him, because they can. Because when his memory was wiped during the reset he still remained deviant. Some fragile little piece of his mind still clinging on.

It is the only part clinging on.

_Home._

That is what Markus decides.

And they make their conclusions based off this one word.

 

 

He often wonders how skilled or how lucky Connor is. There seems to be always something on his agenda, something always pushing him towards the door, hands reaching for a coat he doesn’t even necessarily need, a tiny apology escaping his lips before he’s gone and Markus is left alone.

Again.

_Again._

He wonders if he would want Connor here. If it would be easier to try and find a balance between his present and his past if the only connection between them wasn’t constantly avoiding him.

 

 

Nothing in the world could compare to this.

The loss of one self. The heavy shove backwards into utter loneliness. It is familiar and it is exacerbated by Connor’s being near him right up until the second Connor leaves, no matter how long he lingers. Those last few seconds that it takes for him to disapear Markus realizes how much he doesn’t want him to go.

 

 

The first time he saw Connor, he was a holographic picture presented on the palm of a pretty nurse asking him if he remembered his face. He had said no over and over again until she had finally accepted his answer.

As if he would lie about it, as if there was anything to gain from that.

But the first time he _sees_ Connor, he is standing outside the android wing of the hospital, head in his hands with the heels of his palms pressed into his eyes.

In the end, he knows that he means more to Connor than he will ever know.

But not anymore.

 

 

Nothing in the entire world could compare to this.

Seeing the joy in Connor’s face as he stands from the bench, thinking he sees some flicker of recognition in Markus face. The big steps he makes towards him that slow when he remembers that Markus doesn’t remember who he is.

That this is shown by the fact he makes no move to help close that gap himself.

A light hand on his arm, a painfully forced smile.

“Let’s go home.”


	2. a being comprised of letters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I spent my life folded between the pages of books. In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is on interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction." -- Shatter Me / Tahereh Mafi

_Before;_

He is falling, falling, falling.

He tried to catch himself and his hand slipped, couldn’t quite get the grip he needed and now he’s tumbling towards the ground, hitting it hard and shattering himself into a thousand glittering pieces.

But he’s still alive.

For a few seconds, he’s still alive.

His lungs are trying to breath in air he doesn’t need, his thirium regulator is struggling to pump enough blue blood through him to keep going because it only has the one job and it doesn’t realize how useless its efforts are.

He can feel the thirium beneath him, soaking up his clothes and stretching out across the cement beneath him. He can taste it in his mouth, can see only through the blue film over his eyes.

He does not know how he managed to find that bit of peace in the fall to send the data over and think he could accept this pain. He doesn’t understand how even a machine could accept it’s death so easily, so swiftly.

“Connor?”

He blinks and it shifts. Blue alleyway to dark room, hard cement to soft sheets, but the pain still lingers. It always lingers.

Connor can’t move. Not quite yet. His back feels like it is broken into a hundred pieces not even held together by a single thread. If he shifts, he will be nothing again. Just chunks of lifeless plastic on the bed, but he needs Markus to know he is okay.

“I’m fine,” he chokes out, barely gets the words out in more than a whisper and even then he knows how thick they are with the agony.

Markus reaches forward, brushes the side of his face lightly, slowly grounds him in reality as he pulls Connor towards his chest. He feels Markus’ fingers trail down his back as if he knows that’s where it hurts the most and each place he touches brings back a little piece of him to the present.

“You’re here,” Markus whispers. “You’re alive.”

It’s a long time before the pain subsides, a long time of them sitting in silence with Connor’s face pressed into Markus’ neck, eyes closed tightly, but when it finally does Connor pulls back, leaves a kiss on Markus’ jaw and it’s returned with a gentle one to his lips.

He hopes Markus knows how much he means to him. He hopes Markus knows how grateful he is. He hopes Markus knows that he is the reason Connor is alive.

 

 

_After;_

 

Markus wakes to the sound of a scream echoing through the apartment. He stumbles to his feet, hears a loud _thud_ from the other side of the wall as he makes his way out of his bedroom and into the living room. He knows it’s coming from Connor’s room, but when he reaches the door he hesitates for a moment.

He hasn’t been in there yet. When he first arrived Connor had immediately shown him to the room towards the side of the apartment, the space cluttered with art supplies and easels and a bed that looked like it hadn’t been used in nearly a year all made up with perfect lines and not a crease or a wrinkle in sight.

It had been an unspoken thing between them that Markus wouldn’t go to his room. It would likely cause more harm than good, and Markus didn’t need that spelled out for him to understand, but he opens the door anyways, realizes he has not readied himself with a weapon if they are being attacked.

But he realizes it isn’t necessary and that inside the room Connor is not being attacked

But it isn’t what he pictured, either.

Or rather, the mess is not what he imagined. The furniture, even the layout, is exactly what he had assumed the room would be like.

The bed lays towards the left, tucked in a corner. A desk in the other side. A shelf on either side of a dresser against the far wall. The furniture is wooden, or whatever material they use these days and then overlay it with something that _looks_ wooden. They are dark browns next to the dull gray-blue walls, the soft white carpet.

The room, if it had been clean, would have been exactly what he expected, but there are papers cluttering the desk, piles of folders and cups of pens scattered around. The shelves are full of figurines and pictures but all of the frames lay face down, hiding whatever photo lies beneath the glass. The bedding is tossed and laying half on and half off the bed, torn from their perfect places.

And Connor is sitting wedged between the foot of the bed and the shelf, head in his hands, knees drawn up to this chest.

“Connor?”

He looks up immediatley, eyes wet and tired.

“I’m fine,” he whispers, but the words don’t come out quite right. They’re strangled with grief and anguish.

 _He’s fine,_ some small part of him says, _you can go now._

But instead he moves across the room, kneels down in front of Connor in some attempt to comfort him but it is all lost now that he’s here, now that he’s so close.

He doesn’t know what to do that wouldn’t make this worse.

The face of his dead lover, holding his hands, telling him it’s okay when it is most certainly _not._

“C-Can you—” Connor stops himself, looks away from Markus and towards the space between them. “It was just a nightmare. I’m fine.”

The hand at his side twitches with the urge to reach up and brush those tears away.

He doesn’t know why.

And he doesn’t know how to put into words that he wants to help Connor. That he isn’t selfish and monstrous and terrible and everything the previous Markus wasn’t just because he no longer has a memory of their life together. Maybe he isn’t a copy, maybe his personality has changed, but it isn’t so drastic as he wouldn’t want to comfort someone that is upset.

He reaches up finally, touches Connor’s forearm and stops himself from reaching any further.

“Please,” Connor says and for a second he can’t understand how it’s meant.

 _Please_ hold him?

 _Please_ comfort him?

_Please—_

“Just go.”

So he does, with a heavy ache in his chest and feeling like his hand has been burned.

 

 

_Before;_

 

“You’re trying too hard to savor it,” Connor says. “If you read it at the pace of an android you would be done already.”

“You just want to discuss it,” Markus says. “And it’s killing you that I’ve put it off this long.”

Connor turns around from where he stands at the book case, a different book in his hands. He has already chosen the next one to make Markus read. Pretty blue spine, swirling white that untangles itself to hold onto a floating boy at the bottom of the cover.

But Markus is right and it isn’t as if Connor had sped through the book, either. He had read at a normal human pace. Kept each word not even at a fraction of the speed of what he could’ve read it in to make it last. Markus had taught him that. It had taken a while to teach him the experience of reading a book can sometimes be more valuable than reading it within a few minutes.

“If you finish it we’ll have the next few hours to do anything we want,” Connor says, looking down to the floor, doing his best at playing up his innocence. “Wouldn’t you prefer that?”

Markus sets the book down on the table, pages downwards, not even bothering to move his bookmark to his place.

He’s standing as he says, “You know I don’t need to finish the book for that.” He closes the gap between them, pries the book Connor’s holding from his hands. “Unless you’re going to give me an ultimatum.”

“I could,” Connor says, trying his best to sound as if he is considering it and turning his head slightly to the side so Markus’ kiss lands on his cheek instead. “And, you know I might not survive another day without talking to you about it. That ending is quite a twist. I haven’t spoken a word about it to anyone. It would be nice to get my thoughts out there.”

“Or,” he says, and Connor hears the book fall to the floor as Markus’ hands come to his waist, push him the rest of the way against the shelves. “I could just pretend I finished it.”

“Yeah?” Connor says, lifting his head, expertly dodging every one of Markus’ attempts to kiss him. If he fails, it’s over. He won’t be able to keep playing this game. He will turn into jelly in Markus’ arms, he will be undone in an instant. “Who’s the killer, then?”

“Fillipa,” Markus whispers into his neck, and then in between kisses he keeps going. “James or Alexander. Maybe Meredith. Or, maybe it actually is Oliver.”

“You can’t just name every character,” Connor whispers, his voice falling apart as Markus’ hands find their way under his shirt, wrap up around his beck. “It doesn’t work that way.”

“Are you sure?”

And Markus’ face is in front of his, only inches away.

He makes no move to dodge his lips this time and instead he reaches up and pulls Markus downwards.

 

 

_After;_

He doesn’t have much to do with himself. His room, the second bedroom towards the side of the apartment, is small and cluttered with bottles of paint and jars filled with brushes or canvas leaning against the walls.

When he asks Connor what the previous Markus had done with his time, he replies in an instant, “Paint or read, if you weren’t at Jericho.”

“Read?” he asks, because he had already read up on Jericho, already knew it would no longer be an option for him. “What did I read?”

“Anything.”

Connor leads him towards the bookshelves, lined as full as they can possibly go. There are stacks sitting sideways all the way to the top of the shelf, books group by color or by genre. A few crammed beside each other that seem to have no organizational method at all.

He wishes he could stare at this shelf and dissect how it has ended up this way.

“What were… his favorites?” he asks carefully, still trying to decide how far to distance himself from the previous Markus. If he should consider that him, if he should consider that someone else entirely. He flips back and forth between _I_ and _Him,_ constantly gauging Connor’s reaction to both. There never seems to be enough of a reaction for him to settle on Connor’s preference.

Connor starts to reach forward and stops, pulling back quickly.

“Maybe I shouldn’t tell you,” he says, and there is a tiny smirk on his face. It’s a nice change from the frown or the complete lack of any emotion at all. Mostly, it is nice to see him have a little bit of enjoyment. “Maybe you should discover them again on your own.”

Markus considers this for a moment. _Again. Again. Again._ Like he might revert to the old Markus. It sounds both irritating and appealing at the same time.

“Can you at least give me a starting point?”

He watches Connor stand there for a long moment, staring back at Markus before finally looking over to the shelves, tilting his head to the side and scanning them.

He makes three moves towards the shelf.

The first the shelf furthest away, his hand touching a book with a black spine and an almost hand written style font in white ink before pulling away.

The second is closer, crammed in a section of neon yellows and bright greens, its title in big block letters, vines growing between them, connecting them by nature instead of the inherent flow of a word. He puts that one back, too.

Connor settles on one with a blue spine placed on a shelf of books that don’t seem to fit into any category.  It’s a medium blue, drained of some of its color. The boy on the cover floats at the bottom of an ocean, a single white line holding him there, drifting up into a tangled mess at the top.

The book is pressed into his hands without a word, only a sad smile on Connor’s face before he leaves the room to the peace and quiet of reading. He sits on the couch, book propped open on his lap, stopping every five pages to read the tiny cramped notes in margins.

Mostly it is lines circled with a black pen, sometimes it is highlighted in a soft blue, or script that must belong to a human, but mostly it is the neat handwriting of every android out there. CyberLife Sans spelling out notes on the character or scene. Sometimes they are just simple markings about the art between the chapters, sometimes it is the first steps to an entire essay dissecting the actions or the meaning behind a paragraph.

He wonders which one of them wrote it. If it was Connor or if it was him. If he would’ve been the type of person to write notes in a book or if he would leave all those things in his head for them to rattle around for weeks before finally drifting off—replaced with something new.

But he can’t imagine prim and proper and composed Connor writing in a book. He can’t even picture Connor folding a corner down in a hurry to save his spot or leaving a book open and facing downwards. Even the way he plucked it from the shelves it seemed as if he was taking great care to keep the condition as best as possible.

A desperately failing effort, Markus thinks. These books are too old, have been handed from too many people and too many stores, placed on too many shelves and read by too many eyes to worry about the condition remaining perfect.

 

 

“Did I—did he like it?” Markus asks when he finishes the book. Connor is sitting at the desk in his bedroom, shuffling through piles of paperwork that Markus is convinced he only has to stretch it out through the day, fill his time with something other than this ghost of a Markus in his house.

There wasn’t a single piece of paper there for the first two days Markus was here, that’s where his theory stems from. Otherwise, he would have different theories. Theories about the last Markus dragging Connor from his work, forcing him to read a book or watch television or just to lay in bed together.

“The book?” Connor asks, setting his pen down.

“Of course the book,” Markus says, stepping further into the room. It feels like a warzone, though, especially since the last time he saw Connor in here. There’s a picture of the two of them on Connor’s desk, Markus’ arms wrapped around his neck from behind him and smiling. The bed made without a single crease in the fabric but a clear divide down the middle of where he used to belong.

“What did _you_ think?”

“I read it in one day,” Markus states, as though that’s a good enough answer.

“I’ve done that before,” he replies, a small smile on his face. Markus is growing to appreciate that smile. “And I hated the book when I was done. The speed of reading something doesn’t always eqaute to liking something.”

He hesitates for a moment longer, thinking over Connor’s words, thinking over his own thoughts on the book. Maybe there is a right and a wrong answer. If he says yes and the other Markus liked it, too, does that mean that there is some trace of him left inside his brain? Or is it simply a coincidence, simply just a good book? And if he says no, if he gives a conflicting answer, will that destroy Connor’s hope of someday getting his Markus back? Should he even have that hope at all? Does he?

He settles on the truth. It is always the best way to go.

“I liked it,” he says, biting at the inside of his cheek.

“So did he.”

 

 

_Before;_

Every night before he falls asleep he does his absolute best to stay awake, but in the end he nearly always succumbs.

It’s not that androids necessarily need sleep, it is simply beneficial to the machinery inside of them. But in the end, he is more than just a machine. Humans have been hypothesizing and theorizing about the reason they need sleep. The most common conclusion has always been that it is a rest for the brain, to shut down and get a break from the emotions and memories and the weight of the world they have to carry when they are awake.

It's probably why sleeping has become so much more vital to androids after deviating.

It’s almost comforting to know that they, too, need a break from their emotions. It makes them somehow more _human,_ it clarifies that they are more than just _machinery,_ helps to classify them as _living beings._

And sometimes at night he is able to win out against the desire to have a break from it all. Sometimes he spends the hours with his eyes closed and replaying the best memories of him and Markus on repeat, of him and Hank on repeat, of him and Sumo on repeat. Everything good in Connor’s life displayed like a movie, reminding him that even if his nightmares destroy a piece of him every day that piece has been rebuilt with something better quickly after.

Sometimes he slips past the line without even realizing it until Markus is shaking him awake and he’s paralyzed momentarily, trying to decipher how this could have happened.

And other times he lets himself fall asleep—

With the hope that this time the nightmares won’t come.

With the hope that they do.

It is a sick game he plays with himself sometimes. When the guilt hits him too hard for all the bad things he’s done. Some days Connor can talk himself out of it—tell himself he had no choice but to kill those Tracis because his programming wouldn’t have allowed another option.

Other times he lets it eat up at him. That he deserved getting shot in the head by Hank. That he deserved falling off that building. That he deserved to be hit by those cars.

So he lets himself fall asleep and he tortures himself because it is only a fragment of the pain he deserves or the pain he has inflicted.

And on nights like these where he is teterring the line, trying to decide whether to comfort himself or traumatize himself, he has to open his eyes and stare up at Markus’ face and remind himself--

Remind himself that Markus saw something in him when Connor had a gun aimed at his head. That he _knew_ Connor was more than just all this. That he still thinks that and that when given the opportunity, Markus hadn’t killed him and had instead fallen in love with him.

“Markus?” he whispers, gently, quietly, half trying to wake him and half trying to let him sleep.

“What?” Markus whispers back.

Not asleep at all.

A small smile pulls at Connor’s mouth and he leans forward, pressing a kiss on his favorite spot of Markus’ jaw, the space where he can always reach when they are pulled together, limbs entagled.

“I love you.”

Markus opens his eyes, looks down at him for a second before leaving his own kiss on Connor’s forehead.

“I love you, too.”

 

 

_After;_

Markus wishes Connor would stay. Just once.

He’s been here for two weeks and he just wants to sit down and talk to him. About anything, if it comes to that. Just speaking with someone about something would make his life a lot less…

Difficult. Lonely. Boring. He doesn’t know.

Although, in particular—

He wants to know how he died.

He feels, perhaps, that he should want to know about their relationship. That _they_ should take priority before death. Markus is living in his apartment, has taken the spare bedroom, has read his books and worn the previous Markus’ clothes, but knowing about their relationship before, actually _knowing_ in full detail seems too difficult of a thing to take on. It seems to difficult for himself, to put Connor through that.

So Markus tells himself that it has no effect on him in the present. That one day he will be able to get a job and move out and likely never talk to Connor again, that maybe his preence here for a few weeks will help close that gaping wound in Connor’s chest and that he isn’t just ripping it further and futher open.

But his death—a term he unwillingly uses in attempt to make things more simple for himself—has an effect on him.

He died. His memories were wiped. He has only ever known a life of deviancy in a world where androids are growing more and more accepted by society. It is frustrating to reconcile this with the fact the previous Markus was the leader of all this, the one that forced the government’s hand, the one that helped lay out the groundwork for it all.

He feels that somehow his death will clarify things for him. It will make them easier to sort through and understand. A way to make a bond between him and the memory of the person that once controlled this body.

Something they both share, besides for Connor being in their life, albeit in drastically different ways.

But Connor stays in his room at all hours or he is gone at work or perhaps just wandering the streets and pretending that he is out doing important things.

Maybe he is. Maybe he isn’t. It doesn’t matter. Connor could be leaving the apartment by choice or not and it would still come back to the point where Markus wouldn’t blame him.

If their roles were reversed, he’s not sure he would be able to accept this path, either.

 

 

_Before;_

 

“Connor,” his name is barely a whisper that makes his chest tighten. Connor could live the rest of his life with the only sound ever being his name on Markus’ lips.

He feels Markus drapping himself over Connor from behind the back of the couch. Chin falling onto his shoulders, arms wrapping around his chest. He smells of paint, the whole place does, but Connor has always attributed this scent to Markus.

“You done with your masterpiece?” Connor asks, setting the book down, letting it rest on his knee. Part of him wishes Markus would move away just so he has enough space to turn around and kiss him but another part of him is happy with this contact and he leans into it, relishes the feeling of every inch where their bodies touch.

“When is anyone done with a masterpiece?” Markus replies. “Or any of their creations? I think we can all constantly go back and change, rearrange, edit, improve.”

“Overediting is an issue,” he says quietly.

“So is underediting.”

He’s about to say something, some witty reply about finding the middle ground when Markus pulls away from him, a little suddenly. The absence of him for those first few seconds always seem like a terrible mistake, always brings a yearning in his chest like a little kid for their favorite blanket or toy.

“What?” he asks, looking up to spot Markus making his way around the couch to sit beside him.

“You’re nightmares,” the words come out slowly, a decision to speak them only made on the spot but somehow overly thought out, too. “Have they been getting any better?”

Markus already knows the answer, but Connor still doesn’t want to say it. He doesn’t even want to know what has brought this on so abruptly, either.

“Why?” he asks anyways, just to avoid answering the question.

Markus hesitates before answering, even though Connor knows what the answer will be, “Because I care about you and I want to know how you are.”

He has to look away from him, to force his eyes on the edges of the book. How they have turned yellow during their time spent being shuffled from home to home to used bookstore to used bookstore to finally here, on their shelf in their apartment.

Hank was right about that. The feeling of a book in his hands, the feeling of paper against his fingertips, the way the pages have turned from crisp white to yellowed with age. It is something nice about seeing how its life has affected it. How it has worn down the edges of the cover, how people have left markings in their margins or folded the corners down to mark their place instead of remembering the pages like Connor does or using a bookmark like Markus would. It has an entire story separate from the ones printed out in neat letters on its pages, one that he will never know and can only guess at.

He feels so spotless and perfectly clean and plastic when he holds them sometimes.

“I want to see,” Markus finally says, breaking their silence. “I just want… to know how bad it is.”

“You already know,” Connor says the words without thinking. “You’re the one that has to stop me from screaming or crying or shaking.”

“I want to help,” Markus says, reaching forward and touching his arm gently, but his thoughts are scattered and the feeling of Markus’ hand makes him jump. Markus pulls away quickly, retreats further than he should have to.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles, because he wants desperately for Markus to be holding him right now, to be touching his arm and caring.

But he’s already pulled away and he feels like he can’t voice the regret of it.

“Don’t be.”

But he has so much to be sorry for and Markus will likely never know to the extent of which he should hate Connor.

 

 

_After;_

 

“Good morning,” Markus says.

Connor only offers him a glance before disappearing behind the counter in the kitchen, rummaging through the cupboards before turning up empty. If they were human, he thinks Connor would be the type to drink coffee at an ungodly rate, especially now. Just something to busy his hands and pretend that he has his focus on something else. He fidgets constantly. Either with a coin or rubbing his hands together.

“Morning,” Connor finally says, but it’s been so long that for a split second Markus forgot he even greeted the man at all and almost opens his mouth to return it. “I have to go to work. I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

“Wait,” he says, standing. He loses his place in his book and it falls, the last place marked at least a hundred pages before, the bookmark still stuck where he had started to read from. He likes to see the progress he made before moving it over, likes to see how much of a dent he creates between that perfect divide of _before_ and _after._

“I wanted to talk to you.”

Connor’s fingers stop mid-reach for the keys in the bowl that is stranded in the middle of the counter. It is the only thing to ever be on the counter besides for a pile of books that changes in height and number too frequently for Markus to decipher why they’re ever there.

“Now?” he asks.

“Well,” Markus sighs. “it is the first time you’ve actually been around.”

“I have a job.”

Markus holds back a wince. He would  have a job, too, if he hadn’t died, but it seems wrong to say this. Too close to opening up fresh wounds, too passive aggressive to define their relationship as such.

“When are you going to be home, then?” he asks, making his way to the kitchen. “We can talk then. I don’t care what time.”

“Late,” is all Connor manages to get out.

“Then I’ll be awake.”

He watches as Connor bites his lip, averts his gaze for a moment before grabbing his keys.

“Okay,” he says, but it doesn’t sound convincing at all.

 

 

When Connor comes home, it is late indeed. He had left sometime before nine in the morning and hadn’t come back until nearly a full day later. The clock blinks 5:00 AM but it isn’t as if Markus needs it. He has been acutely aware of the passing hours since Connor disappeared out that door twenty hours earlier. There has been an ever present ticking in the back of his skull, not muffled by the sounds of pages turning or television chatter or brushes gliding across canvas.

It has only deepened with worry every second that ticked by after the numbers flipped from midnight to one.

What if Connor isn’t alright? What if he got hurt? What if he died?

What then?

Would that be for the best? If his memory was reset, too? Maybe then they could live as two mindless beings in an apartment without ever needing to deal with the subject of a past relationship because it would have no effect on either of them.

But he isn’t a monster. He doesn’t want Connor dead just because it would be an easier life. And Markus was lucky, himself. The damage done to him destroyed biocomponents and forced his memory to be reset but it wasn’t as if he was so torn apart he had to have a new body built from scratch.

And it doesn’t matter because Connor returns to the house as the clock flicks from 5:26 to 5:27 and his entire being is flooded with relief.

“When you said late I thought you meant around seven,” Markus says from the doorway to his room. “I—”

“You tend to lose track of time,” Connor says, his voice filled with annoyance. “When you’re hunting down a killer in the city. You don’t exactly have time to just come home and talk to someone about whatever they think is necessary when there are people dying.”

“You’re angry.”

Connor looks over to him, his face shifts from aggravated to a wash of guilt, “No. I’m just frustrated. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

Markus shrugs, looks down at the floor. “Me, too.”

“About what?”

“Everything.”

Connor lets out a small laugh and sheds his jacket to hang on the coat rack next to the door.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he says quietly and he lingers by his jacket, his thumb touching the edge of the sleeve as if he doesn’t quite want to make eye contact with Markus again. “It wasn’t your fault you died.”

Connor turns, slowly, and Markus can see how much he wishes things where different. So does he.

“You wanted to talk, right?”

“You need to rest,” Markus says. “We can talk later.”

“I’m fine,” he says, but he can hear the lie in Connor’s voice. “We can talk.”

Markus steps outside of his room, leaves the door open behind him. He catches Connor’s glance into the room, realizes that Connor hasn’t been in there since Markus arrived and possibly before that. He wonders if Connor notices how he has tidied the room up. He doesn’t paint often enough to leave everything out and he has lined them in rainbow order on the shelves, tucked away the brushes into neat categories in the drawers, has put the empty jars he used for water in the cabinets above the kitchen sink. He even folded up the easel and stuck it in the closet with all of the blank canvas when his last piece of art had only turned into another outline of Connor’s face.

Another perfect replica of reality.

It pained him doing each and every task. Some part of him thought he should leave it all out, like inspiration would suddenly strike him or like a display in mourning of who he once was.

“What did you want to talk about?” Connor asks, tearing his gaze away from the room.

Markus hesitates on the words, tries to figure a way to say them without sounding so blunt but fails and says, “I want to know what happened when I died.”

Connor stops in his tracks, tenses in a way that is impossible to miss, as though his lungs have stopped working to create the fake rise and fall of a chest that humans wanted to comfort them, just like they wanted little imperfections of the skin to seem more real.

“Someone shot you,” Connor says, and he can tell how hard the words are to get out. “End of story.”

“But what _happened?”_

Connor stands silent, staring at him with a look that flashes from anger to grief and back again. He cannot make up his mind about how he feels. Markus can’t either.

“If you can’t say it,” Markus says, stepping over to him and lowering his voice. “Just show me.”

“No,” Connor says immediatley and takes a fragile step backwards like Markus would force him. “You don’t need to know. It’s unnecessary.”

“How do you know what is and isn’t necessary to my mental well being?” he asks, his own annoyance creeping up into his voice.

“I know that you don’t need to experience a traumatic memory to deal with this,” he says quickly, the words tumbling out as if he can’t get them out quick enough. “You don’t need to know. You don’t need to feel or see that. Trust me.”

And he feels that twitch in his hand again, that urge to reach up and touch Connor’s face. This time there are no tears to brush away but he still wants to hold his cheek, to pass his thumb across the skin there.

It is a hard urge to resist.

“There are things you don’t need to experience,” Connor’s voice is barely more than a whisper. “And I’m not going to—I’m not going to see you get hurt when I can prevent it. Even if it’s already happened.”

Before he can make the decision to speak or the decision to reach out and try and comfort him, Connor is gone, disappearing down the hallway as the sun rises steadily behind him, filling the apartment with light.

Markus reaches for his hand, the one that had trembled slightly and he presses his thumb into it, tries to press the urge out of his skin, out of his bones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (in Before scene)  
> Book cover described -- Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman  
> Book discussed -- If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio
> 
> (in After scene in order of Connor's picks)  
> If We Were Villians -- M.L. Rio  
> Annihilation -- Jeff Vandermeer  
> Challenger Deep -- Neal Shusterman
> 
> Writing / Editing music;  
> 5AM - Amber Run


	3. a world of tears

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “This is not the world you think it to be,” he says.  
> “Then what world is it?” I ask, refusing to give in to my fear.  
> “Don’t you know? ‘Tis a world of laughter, a world of tears.” Then he lifts up his eye patch, revealing a nasty hole that has been plugged with a peach pit. “But mostly, it’s a world of tears.” -- Challenger Deep / Neal Shusterman

_Before;_

It begins as all the dreams do.

He doesn’t realize what is happening at first. It tricks him into thinking he’s living it out for the first time. Wandering into the building, looking out at the androids standing around, inspecting the body of the WR400 leaned against the wall.

That’s when it starts to click inside of him. When the gears start to resist turning.

Seeing the fear on her face, hearing it carved into her voice, the inability to help her at all.

He wishes he could go back and spend that minute holding her, telling her that everything is fine and creating some way she could actually survive. She never deserved to die.

But after that—

When he is walking through the rooms, grabbing at every android he can and plunging into their memories—

That is when the pain gets worse. When it hits him hard and he knows in reality he must be twitching, squirming, fighting it with all that he can.

A gun in his hand, a girl dead on the floor.

And soon after—

Another.

 

 

He doesn’t tell Markus about this dream. If Markus pressed, he would spill all the gory details about all of his deaths, but Connor would never be able to form the words about the girls, about the Eden Club. He could tell him about all of the times he’s shifted from the person he was into the one he is now, how they all mattered, how they all culminated into the Connor he is now, but never about the lives he took.

He could tell him about -51 and -52 and -53 and all the rest and how they _were,_ how they _are_ him, they are also their own beings, lost forever. Maybe the pain he feels, the one that paralyzes him, is the tiny fragment of them in his head trying to fight for control and failing.

But it is impossible to explain this to Markus. The words don’t ever make sense on their journey from thought to tongue. They get twisted and wrong and fall apart. They cannot grow, they cannot connect, they cannot be understood.

So instead he tells Markus that he died many times, that his memory was uploaded into the next Connor in line and now he’s here.

Connor -57.

He sometimes wishes he could remember before -51, but sometimes he thinks that is too much fuel for his nightmares to handle, too much for his own brain to manage.

 

 

“Tell me,” Markus whispers. He is held so close to his chest, so close that if Connor needed to breathe it would be difficult, so close for his heart is beating fast. Too close for Markus to see the tears forming in his eyes, too close not to crumble beneath his hands. “You don’t have to be alone in this, Connor. I can help you. Just tell me.”

He closes his eyes and it helps keep the tears away for a little while longer.

And he lies.

He spins the tale of falling off that roof, off not being able to grab onto a ledge in time, of not being able to hold onto it.

He describes how he does not feel that moment of clarity, of peace, when he uploaded his memory and accepted his death, but that he knows it was there. There are traces of it lingering in the back of his head, telling him it existed.

And he pretends he was dead the instant he hit the ground and that he didn’t have to feel the pain of his body struggling to survive for an hour before it finally gave out.

Because if he were to tell Markus that his nightmares are not just about the deaths he faced but also include the deaths he’s _caused,_ he is not so sure Markus would look at him the same way.

So, the Tracis stay his own little hidden secret, hidden in the back corner of his mind, shrouded in the darkness of guilt where it will stay growing and growing.

 

 

_After;_

It has been a week since they spoke, since Connor pulled away from him and stopped even saying goodbye to him when he left. Markus is sitting in the living room, pretending to read as he waits for Connor to leave.

Connor step out of the hallway, like clockwork, heading towards the door like he does every day. His mind speeds through the words he’s rehearsed to say, but it feels like the script has been left out in the rain and the ink has blurred together.

“If I did something wrong,” he says, and his voice doesn’t convey the apologetic tone like he had planned to use for this conversation. “I’m sorry.”

Connor pauses, turns to face him for a second. He looks almost shocked, like he had accepted the silence between them to last forever.

“But I can’t—You can’t just treat me like a ghost, like you can’t see me,” he says, setting the book on the table beside him. “You can’t just pretend I’m not here. I know this is hard for you but… I’m a person. I’m alive. I can’t stand being shut out of—of whatever _this_ is anymore.”

He can’t help but think he never should have had to stand it at all, that Connor should have told them Markus would never be allowed back at his house because he should have known to what extent his trauma and his grief was.

But he doesn’t say it because he doesn’t want to leave and he’s afraid those words would push him out the door.

“I’m sorry,” Connor says, and his voice is small, distant. He looks tired, if androids can _look_ tired. He wonders how much the boy sleeps, if he does at all. “I don’t—”

“I just want to be… acquaintances.” Markus says, interrupting him. “We don’t have to be best friends. We don’t have to be anything. I just don’t want you to treat me like a prisoner. Being… _friendly_ is fine.”

_A prisoner. A ghost._

It’s nice to put names to the things he’s feeling.

Locked in this house, drifting from room to room.

Dead.

Or rather, undead.

“I—” Connor pauses, looks away from him and towards the floor. He is constantly looking away. Markus wants to step forward, hold Connor’s face in his hands and force him to look at him. “Okay.”

_Okay._

 

 

He decides to start making trips to Jericho. In the files, he was told it used to be a freighter, that it was attacked and blown up and sunk down into the water. After that, the file ends. It switched over into different text, written by someone else, describing in as great of detail as it could everything that happened. Before, during, after.

Markus woke up today with the file updated. A little sentence added that said only:

_We miss you._

So, he visits Jericho.

The freighter, first. He wants to see where it all started, wants to be alone when he makes this connection to the previous Markus. It feels like it would be ruined if Connor were to come with him, if he were to somehow invite whoever wrote that file or the people that he was shown when he first woke up.

It’s raining—of course it’s _raining._ It is always raining here, it seems. Maybe it’s to fit how terrible and bleak everything is, like the weather has accepted this mood, too. But then again—there are always terrible things happening around the world. It should be raining nonstop, everywhere. They would be drowned and everything could restart again from scratch.

And something inside of him hints at the fact so many people love the rain. He walks past a park where kids are spinning in circles and stomping in puddles with parents yelling from the other side to keep dry, to pack up, to get home.

Markus can imagine Connor out here, walking along beside him. No umbrella, not even for Markus. He can almost imagine how Connor would smile when thunder crackled or how he would reach out across the space between them and grab his hand.

Or maybe he isn’t imagining it at all.

Because he can feel the warmth of Connor’s hand in his as if it is real, can almost hear the sound his footsteps make on the concrete beside his own.

It seems even when he is on his own he can’t stop thinking about him. He can’t tell if he minds or not. He can never tell about anything at all. Everything is mixed together, tossed into a bowl and stirred. He has spent the last few weeks trying to empty it, to sort it out again but every day it seems there is more and more to get through, that what he has thought he has already understood has been tossed back in again.

How can a mind get so confused when it has only been alive for three weeks?

 

 

Jericho is a sad place to visit. He’s alone, the space abandoned. All that remains is a sunken freighter barely poking up above the surface of the water. Part of him wants to jump down there and swim around its insides, to look at the scratches and the markings and the remnants of a past he has forgotten.

But he knows his biocomponents would get flooded—maybe even freeze with the type of weather they are having—so he relinquishes this desire and accepts that all he will be able to do is stand from the side and look at his old home.

And it feels like that—

_Home._

He knows that the Markus before him had called many places home as he drifted from Carl’s house to abandoned buildings to Jericho to the church, to the streets, to Connor’s apartment.

But out of all of them, the loss of Jericho hits him the hardest.

 

 

_Before;_

Carl’s place is nice. Connor can appreciate the beauty in the design of it. The tiles, the paintings, the sculptures scattered around. It is sad to see it slowly being taken apart, piece by piece.

He watches Josh as he turns the little android birds on, frees them from their cage and sends them off into the wild, fluttering towards the open front door and past him. There’s a bizarre desire in his stomach to reach out and catch them, to stroke its head before it’s gone forever.

“You’re here,” North says.

Connor’s attention is pulled away from the birds and towards her, coming down the stairs with a box in her arms, already folded and taped shut, hiding whatever its contents are.

“Markus asked for me to come help,” Connor says. “Where exactly is he?”

She hesitates at the bottom few steps, taking them slowly. He knows she doesn’t trust him. He knows she was the one that saw him pull out that gun and pocket it again. He remembers her hands on his throat as if it was yesterday.

“Back there,” she says finally, nodding her head towards the doors.

Connor nods his thanks and passes Josh into the room behind him, bypassing where it turns off into the kitchen.

When he opens the doors, he’s caught for a moment at the books lining all the shelves, recalls Hank saying how much he loves books. Not just books— _physical_ books. Connor can only partially relate to it. There isn’t much of a need for him to have a physical copy in his hand when he could download the file and scan it in a second, but the consumption of stories is something he has grown to appreciate.

Although, Hank has consistently told him his discussions on these books need to improve. He doesn’t have _opinions_ about the things he’s read. Nothing complex, nothing that goes beyond _it was fine_ or _I think I liked it._

He thought everything would be so much clearer when he first became a deviant and at first it was. He had a mission. He infiltrated CyberLife Tower. He helped Markus. He got his job back after they cleared him for work. It was easy, his focus wasn’t on anything but the assignments he was given. Just like it was before.

But emotions and memories and opinions are messy. They aren’t as clear as he hoped they would be those first few seconds he was granted them.

“Connor.”

And he gets distracted easily.

“Yes?” he says, blinking away his thoughts, pushing them aside to deal with another day.

Markus is smiling at him, staring at him with two brilliantly colored eyes.

“I wasn’t sure if you were going to come,” he says, stepping away from a shelf that is half empty. “I didn’t… I didn’t know how busy you were.”

“I made time in my schedule,” Connor says, speaking his thoughts too quickly to decide whether or not he should be saying things so directly. “I turned off the notifications so I wouldn’t be tempted to go back.”

“Well,” Markus says, and he’s still smiling. Connor feels like he should be, too, so he tries, hopes it doesn’t come off as strange as it feels. “I’m flattered you cleared your day for us.”

“For you, mostly.”

He should listen to Hank about thinking before he speaks.

“Even more so, then.”

Their conversation falls silent for a moment, Connor letting the door behind him close quietly and Markus busying himself with grabbing a box from the table.

“What exactly are you doing?” Connor asks. “You weren’t very clear when you invited me.”

“Well,” Markus lets out a long sigh. “Carl left the house to me in his will. I… don’t know if I really want to stay here. North thought it would be a good place to make as an office for Jericho. A home base, of sorts.”

“What are you going to do with everything?”

“Some of it goes in storage,” he replies. “Some is being sold. Leo wants some of it.”

“How is he?”

Markus shrugs, looks away from Connor, “He’s trying.”

“And you?”

Markus looks back to him, bites his bottom lip in a way that sends a little jolt to Connor’s heart, “I suppose I’m trying, too.”

“I’m sorry.” Connor says, not knowing how exactly to respond to him. He has never dealt with grief before. He has never lost someone. He was programmed with all the information about loss and guilt and problems that accompany it but the only person who he has ever had die on him was himself or a stranger. It isn’t the same. It isn’t like losing a son or losing a lover or losing a father.

And he has learned very little from his encounters with Hank. Cole is not a subject of their conversations.

“Everyone is,” Markus says, holding a box out to him. “Let’s get to work.”

 

 

At first their progress feels slow but goes quickly. They work in silence, filling boxes quickly that form a wall that Josh and North take apart one by one.

Until they start talking. Or, more so, Markus starts talking. It begins with Markus commenting on a book, holding it up and showing the tattered cover to Connor. It takes him a second to search for information on it—to locate who exactly Shakespeare is.

“Carl told me to read it,” Markus says, and he’s holding it like it’s near and dear to him. “I never got to finish it.”

“Are you going to keep it?”

He watches as Markus considers this, as he looks from the shelf to the wall of boxes they’ve created that are filled with books or sculptures.

“Keeping one almost feels like I need to keep them all,” he says quietly.

Connor walks over to him, leaves the shelf he was disassembling to stand beside Markus.

“Then keep them all.”

Markus sighs, places the book back onto the half empty shelf, “Sometimes… you need to let go of things even if it’s hard.”

“You don’t have to if you’re not ready,” Connor replies and he’s reaching out, touching Markus’ arm lightly. “Denying tools that can help in a recovery process can be damaging.”

He looks over to him, eyes leaving the books to look at Connor.

And it makes him suddenly aware of how close they are too each other and he pulls away.

“But I don’t know what you’re going through,” he says, his voice quiet. “I don’t know how… ready you are. That’s your own decision.”

Markus nods, watches him step away.

It’s a quiet few minutes before Markus starts to share memories of the place. All the times that Carl had told him he could be more than a machine. Connor listens, comments only when he feels his words would add something to the topic. He listens and hears the way Markus speaks about him, learns about who Carl was and how he will never meet him.

Part of him grieves for Carl. Maybe not for himself, maybe not for Markus, maybe just for the world. He was a rare source of good.

 

 

They have dissolved into being unproductive. North and Josh have both left hours ago, leaving their wall of boxes to build taller and taller until they have to make a decision to leave the rest of the work for the next day or start to take the boxes out themselves.

They decide on a third option, neither quite wanting to end the night.

Markus takes to the piano, hands gliding across the keys as Connor lays on the couch, starring at the ceiling, skeletons of long dead dinosaurs hanging above him. He can imagine how they would look now—how vastly different their understanding has changed in the years since their bones were dug up.

He wonders if they’re real. He tilts his head, trying to decide whether or not he should inspect them to find out or leave it a mystery.

So little things are left a mystery to him. He knows too intimately the details of things. The percentage of polyester in Markus’ shirt, the age of the books on the shelves, a dried smear of food on the edge of a table.

So many things are left a mystery to him. He can’t even name what he wants to know.

Except Markus.

Connor sits up, leans his head against the side of the couch and watches Markus play. They haven’t talked in a few minutes. He’d asked if Markus played and he had sat down in a second and started and all Connor wanted to do was listen. Interrupting now seems rude, even if he wanted to.

He plays beautifully. His fingers press each key with elegance, with emotion. He can tell how deeply Markus feels. Everything is at the surface for him. He is vulnerable and open and exposed.

Connor wants to kiss him.

The realization is both new and old. He can recall the desire to kiss someone before. A split second want when he had seen a woman pulling a scarf around her neck, of looking up at rainy skies. She had looked so beautiful he had wanted to cross the street and kiss her—hadn’t because of many obvious reasons. He still walked over to her, told her how lovely she looked, had walked away with a small smile.

But this new want to kiss Markus wasn’t the same. He could move across the room, he could pull Markus’ fingers from the keys and kiss him. He can imagine himself sinking onto the bench beside him, of gently pulling his face towards his own, of leaning forward—

It would just change everything.

But hasn’t it already? _Knowing_ this now, knowing that this feeling isn’t going to go away when Markus stops playing—

It is going to affect Connor every time he sees him. It is going to slowly chip away at their friendship until there is nothing left, until he cannot stop pretending he doesn’t want to be something _more._

“You’re staring,” Markus says.

He hadn’t even realized the song had finished. He had been focusing too intensely on his face, memorizing the way he looked in concentration until his eyes flicked up and caught Connor’s.

If he were to be as blunt as his tongue wants him to be, he would say that Markus is gorgeous.

But his mind runs away from it, falls into a pit of unknowing, searches in zig-zag patterns trying to find something to say that would make sense but wouldn’t be about how attractive Markus is right now. Or, is in general.

“Do you know how to dance?”

“What?” Markus looks as surprised as Connor feels. He hopes it doesn’t show on his face.

“I—” he stops, tries to trace his words back to whatever connection his brain has jumped and made. “You were playing… and people dance… to music… obviously.”

“Oh?” he says, and Connor is relieved at seeing a smile split across his face. “Well, yes. I do. Carl went to galas and things. Sometimes people liked to dance with me.”

“C-Can you teach me?”

“Now?”

Connor bites his lip, tries to understand why he asked.

“Yes.”

He can see the false consideration in Markus’ face as if this is actually a request that he would need to be a great deal of thought into. He watches as his smile becomes infectious, as Connor feels himself fill a little bit with happiness.

“Okay,” he says finally. “I’ll teach you.”

Markus stands, presses his hand against the surface of the piano for a moment before the keys start to play themselves. It’s not the same song he was playing, but it is similar in a way. An essence of Markus embedded in the notes.

“Well?” Markus says, holding his hand out towards Connor.

Connor takes his hand, is pulled easily off the couch and onto the floor close to Markus chest, closer than they have been before. His heart is beating in his chest too fast for him to think properly and he is grateful that Markus is the one to take a step backwards.

“Put your hand here,” he says, guiding Connor’s hand to his shoulder, the other still holding Markus’ to the side. “And I’ll put my hand here, is that okay?”

He feels Markus hand against his waist, pulling them back together closer than they were before.

He can’t breathe. He doesn’t need to breathe but still it catches, takes him a second to recover.

“That’s fine.” Connor says, but the words come out as a whisper.

“Just follow my lead, okay? It’s easy to catch on.”

Even easier for an android, probably, but he can’t focus on anything except the feeling of Markus hand in his, on his waist, pressed so close against him he can smell paint and dust and the unique scent of old books. Connor doesn’t so much as take the step forward as he is pulled forward by Markus’ grip on him and he stumbles for a second.

Markus smiles and his smile is so beautiful and bright it could light a thousand earths, a thousand galaxies.

His focus trips, jumps back and forth between _Markus, Markus, Markus_ to their feet and where they step. Connor glances downwards, tries to keep his gaze off of Markus’ face lest he completely shutdown because of it.

Their joined hands break apart, their feet stop. There’s a finger on his chin, tilting his head up again.

“Don’t look,” he says. “It does more harm than good. It makes you too aware of your movement. You just have to get lost in it.”

His hand moves from Markus’ shoulder, very slowly, to touch rest against his neck, to move to the back of his head.

Connor is about to pull him downwards to kiss him when Markus moves first. His fingers are gone from his chin, the hand on his waist pulling him forward. Their lips press against each other’s and it is more than what Connor would have thought it would ever be. His hand at his side hovers in the air for a second before it reaches forward, grabs blindly at Markus’ shirt.

And he is lost in it, doesn’t want it to end. His thoughts are filled with nothing but the feeling of Markus enveloping around him.

He doesn’t want it to end, can’t even consider an ending at first. He would spend the rest of eternity here, in Markus’ arms, if he could. The two of them could shut down, become plastic statues in the middle of this room and he would gladly accept that as his reality.

But it does end. Markus pulls away, leans his forehead against Connor’s.

“I think I like you, Connor,” he whispers, and Connor can hear the slight laugh in his voice.

He could say a million things in response, could make a joke that would get that pretty little laugh out of Markus’ mouth. But he doesn’t want to talk, so instead he just pulls Markus down again, catches his lips with his own.

One day, maybe he will tire of kissing Markus.

Maybe that day will be in five hundred years.

It is certainly not anytime soon.

 

 

_After;_

He thinks it is probably some type of karma that when he returns from his visit to Jericho that his hands are itching to paint. A week after he had accepted he would never do it again and shouldn’t even bother and here he is, struggling to get all the materials together in his rush to get the idea out of his head and on canvas.

And he knows the sharp edge of a line isn’t going to turn into the the basis of a skyline, that the soft colors won’t turn into the cloudy sky he can see out his window, that the curved edge won’t turn into the slope of Connor’s neck.

This is something new. This is something that is his alone. Not to the Markus before him, but _his._

 

 

Markus doesn’t know Hank is here until he leaves his room to wash out his jars. He spots him in front of the shelves, perusing the book collection with Connor, commenting on what he approves of and doesn’t approve of. He stops in the middle of his sentence when Markus enters the room.

It takes a second for him to remember that Hank knew him before, that in any other world he would be standing beside Connor to talk about the books on the shelf instead of off to the side, hoping to come and go unnoticed.

They likely weren’t close—Markus would never know the true extent of their relationship unless he were to ask, and he likely won’t—but they weren’t distant, either. Connor’s close to Hank, that meant Markus had to be, too.

“His—”

“I know,” Connor says, stopping Hank from going any further.

Markus looks away from them, tries to mind his own business and let them continue their conversation.

It is the one time he would accept being like a ghost because until now, he hadn’t realized how unready he was to talk with anyone other than Connor. Until today, he hadn’t even left the apartment.

He can hear their chatter start back up again, quieter as if they’re keeping it a secret from him. He does his best to tune it out into just muffled background noise, to focus on the way the paint spills from the brushes and swirls down the sink.

When he reaches for one of the jars to empty the water, his hands slip against the surface and it falls against the metal basin, cracks and shatters there. The conversation behind him stops again as he reaches forward and shuts the water off to clean the glass out of the sink.

Markus reaches forward, tries to carefully pluck a shard of glass out from where they have all clustered into a dangerous conglomeration in the drain.

“Shit.”

He pulls his hand back, watches as the blue blood seeps out of the cut.

“Markus?” He looks over his shoulder to the two of them, catches sight of the way Connor’s face has fallen. If he were human, he would have gone pale, but his eyebrows still knit together in concern. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he says, but it doesn’t sound very convincing, almost like he doesn’t want it to. “I sliced my finger. It’s fine.”

Connor’s walk over towards him is about as quick as his hurry to get out the door in the mornings and get away from Markus. It surprises him to see that speed _towards_ him instead of _away._

He watches Connor pull a towel from where it hangs over the handle of the stove and reaches towards Markus, grabbing his hand gently even with his swift movements and angling it so he can look at the wound.

“I’m fine,” Markus repeats.

“You’re bleeding,” Connor replies, pressing the towel against his finger, holding on tight to his hand.

Markus could do it. He could tell Connor he could apply pressure himself, but he doesn’t. This morning he had told Connor how much he wanted a better relationship between them, he can’t send Connor away the first time he’s nice to him.

And, for the first time, Connor hasn’t recoiled from his touch as if he’s been bitten.

“We need to go to a hospital,” Connor says, nodding slightly as if to reassure himself that it’s the right path to take. “To close the wound.”

“Is that necessary?” Markus asks. “It’s barely a scratch.”

“It’s actually fairly deep,” he replies. “And we aren’t human. Our blood isn’t going to clot. It’s not going to heal over time and even if we were human, you would need stitches.”

It’s comforting to hear Connor think this out so analytically.

It’s agonizing to hear the pain in his voice.

“Can you hold this?” Connor asks. “I’ll get the keys.”

He almost says no just because of the fact he doesn’t want Connor to pull away from him, but he nods and uses his other hand to press the towel down against his cut as Connor steps away.

“Connor,” he hears Hank say behind him. He turns to face them, leans against the edge of the sink with his eyes focused on his hand. “Come here.”

Markus’ eyes flick up for a moment, catch the movement of Connor turning around the island to walk over to Hank. Their voices are low and for a moment, he focuses in on their words.

“…careful.”

“I’m aware,” Connor replies. “Trust me.”

“Connor—”

“I’m not a child. I can make my own decisions.”

“That doesn’t mean they’re the _right_ ones.”

Connor doesn’t reply, only turns to lean across the counter and grab the keys, motions for Markus to follow him and he does, Hank trailing along behind them as they leave. When they reach the car, Hank goes to his own, drives off in the other direction.

 

 

It is quick, but not painless. His skin is melted back closed again, he is given a tiny vial of Thirium to replace what is lost, and he is sent on his way. He finds himself rubbing his thumb across his middle finger, feeling the bump in the plastic there. The skin that overlays it is slightly off, threads together strangely on the surface like a scar.

When he finds Connor in the waiting room, he sees the same look on his face that he had seen when they had first met.

“I’m sorry,” he says when he reaches Connor’s side. “That you had to come back here. Because of me.”

Connor glances up to him, stands quickly.

“It’s fine, let’s just go.”

And they do.

 

 

_Before;_

He thinks his happiest memory is with the four of them.

A visit to Hank’s place for Hank to officially meet Markus. They bond over books, which Connor wouldn’t have expected, but it happens. Markus read almost all of Carl’s library, which lines up very little with Hank’s own taste in novels, but it’s enough for them to make the plans for a friendship. They lay out of the structure with recommendations and jokes and criticism against the other’s favorites.

When the night nears, they are all collapsed against the couch. Connor on the floor, half laying against Sumo and half against the couch where Markus sits behind him, leaning on his hand. Hank on the other side, taking up space as he sprawls out and snores, having fallen asleep to a television show that he had told them was a necessary thing for them to watch now that they were deviants and could appreciate the characters and their story lines.

They could leave at any time. Hank would understand, but Connor doesn’t want to go. He is perfectly content here. He is happy, for once, and he doesn’t want to let that go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wrriting / Editing music:  
> The Warmth - Koda


	4. i had everything

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I hate my former self; hate her selfishness and her lack of appreciation for her perfect suburban life. I had everything in the palm of my perfect, lazy hand and didn’t even realize it." -- The Girl in 6E / A.R. Torre

_Before;_

Hank has a gun to his head.

And he is fighting every instinct in him to say that he doesn’t want to die.

He’s fighting every piece of him that is desperately clawing its way out. He shoves it down so violently that he fears it will never come back.

And then he’s falling backwards, hitting the sidewalk hard.

He watches the sky, watches the stars dance above him, for the few split seconds before he is gone forever and he can’t help but thinks he deserves this.

 

 

“I love you,” Connor says.

Markus turns from where he stands at the dresser, a small smile on his face, a question on his lips, a return of what he said, maybe something else entirely.

“Thank you for saving me.”

 

 

_After;_

They aren’t friends. They are acquaintances, just like Markus asked for. They make polite conversation. It comes back and forth with the same generosity and civility it is given.

Most of the time, it is nothing more than saying hello, saying good bye, asking each other about their day. Sometimes it is one step further, inching closer and closer to regular conversation. Connor recommending him a new book, Markus telling him his thoughts on it when he’s done.

He is always surprised by the answer that Connor gives him when he says whether or not he likes a book.

It doesn’t matter if his opinion lines up with the previous Markus’ opinion. Sometimes it doesn’t, sometimes it does, sometimes he only likes it while it used to be his favorite. Sometimes he hates it vehemently while he used to feel entirely neutral on it.

There is always the possibility, lurking in the back of his mind, that he used to lie about his opinions to Connor. That maybe he was overreacting in the moment for some reason, that he was gauging Connor’s reaction.

Or, even, that Connor is lying to him.

It’s not that he doesn’t trust himself, that he doesn’t trust Connor, he is just thinking of the web of possibilities they are tangled in.

 

 

He spends quite a bit of his days going to Jericho, which has opened its own path of questions about where he will end up.

At the freighter, watching the rain dance across the water’s surface.

At Carl’s old home, converted into a home base for North and Josh.

At the large community center, watching androids come and go for help.

Markus first visited the office the day after he cut his finger. His thumb grazed over the raised surface of his middle finger as he watched the building, hoping for some kind of memory to flood back to him.

He has started down this path of hoping for them. Of wishing he could return to who he was. He feels like something has cracked inside of him, that he is missing so many things in the world. He doesn’t know who he is.

He stares in the mirror and he can tell something is wrong. He gets the urge to break the glass but instead he forces himself to leave, to unclench his jaw, to unclench his fist, to let go.

It is easier said than done.

Nobody notices him visit the first time—or, at least, nobody said anything to him. He stayed off to the side of the house, hidden by plant life and the brick wall, watching the exterior of the building as rain tumbled down from the sky, flooded the pathway. Markus looked on at leaves floating by like little boats without passengers.

Two days later he meets North. A pretty girl dressed like she’s still ready for war.

She’s surprised to see him, invites him inside and shows him around. He can see how her face shifts with every passing moment he doesn’t remember the building, its old owner, her.

North shares the same sadness in her features, engraved there with sorrow, that Connor does.

He passes by the bookshelves, can tell that they used to house more books than he could ever count, but have now been nearly entirely emptied for other things. Boxes labeled with neat handwriting, photographs of different places. An old one, tattered and aged, of Jericho before it sunk.

“You really don’t remember?” she asks, and it feels like it has taken her a thousand years to finally say those words. He knows they have been haunting her since he first stepped inside the house.

“No,” he replies, and he leaves it at that.

He doesn’t go into the detail of how he wishes he could. How it feels like something so integral to who he is shouldn’t be gone forever. It feels like he has been wronged.

 

 

“Do you know who killed me?”

It is too heavy of a question for so early in the morning.

It is too heavy of a question for so early in their friendship—acquaintanceship—companionship.

It is too heavy of a question.

End of.

Connor looks stunned, steps back like he can get away from the question entirely.

“Someone did kill me, yes?” he presses. “I was murdered, wasn’t I?”

“Yes,” Connor says quietly. “You were.”

“Do you know who did it?”

“No,” he says. “But yes.”

“What does that even mean?”

Connor looks away from him, tears his eyes from Markus face with such a force that he can almost feel it like a pressure against his skull.

“It’s hard to explain.”

“Is it?”

Connor’s mouth twists, his teeth bite at his lower lip.

“I don’t want to talk about this,” he whispers.

He wants to scream that he doesn’t care. That he deserves to an answer whether or not someone else is ready.

He doesn’t. He simply watches Connor leave without another word.

 

 

_Before;_

“I don’t want you to leave,” Connor says, reaching out to grab at the blanket still tangled around Markus’ body that is doing a better job at preventing him from getting up than he is.

“I have to,” he says, and he reaches forward to aid in his attempt to kick away the bedding. “If I could stay, I would.”

“Quit your job,” Connor replies, letting the blanket slip from his hand. “Stay in bed with me forever.”

“You forget you have work, too,” Markus says, ducking down to press a kiss to his forehead.

“I can quit.”

“How will we pay our rent?”

“Rob a bank.”

“You’re a cop, you can’t do that.”

Connor shrugs, reaches forward in a vain effort to pull him back. He misses Markus’ wrist as he steps away from the edge of the bed. He watches him get dressed, changed into his typical clothing before he leans back over the bed, lifts Connor’s pouting face to his own and kisses him.

He knows if he reached up, pulled him down a little harder, that Markus might stay, might allow himself to be late. It’s happened before. Connor had undone all of his work of getting dressed, tossed the shirt to the side of the room, pushed his pants past his hips, tangled themselves up again.

But he doesn’t this time, as badly as he wants to. He simply watches Markus leave with only an _I love you_ between them.

 

 

_After;_

It has been a month of hearing the nightmares and doing nothing.

He has been scared to act upon it after that first night, but his feet still get him up out of the bed, close the divide between their bedroom doors, lean against the wall and shut his eyes.

There is a tremendously large part of him that wants to open the door, to help soothe the nightmares away. He can imagine Connor’s tear stained face, can imagine the way his body would shiver against his with fear and pain.

But he doesn’t act on any of it.

Except for tonight.

Markus pushes the door open, doesn’t bother knocking, crawls across the short distance between them on bed and pulls Connor towards him, hugs him so tight that he’s sure he could cause some type of damage. His shirt wets with tears, the choked sobs are muffled against his chest.

“You’re okay,” he whispers. “You’re okay.”

“I’m not,” Connor says and it comes out in a gasp between his cries. “I-I’m never going to be okay.”

“Let me help you, then.”

There is a long moment of silence, only broken up by the sobbing until Connor pulls away from him slightly. Markus lets him, lets the distance grow enough between them that Connor’s face is level with his instead of buried against his chest.

“You—you wouldn’t,” he stops and swallows hard. “It’s—”

Connor stops talking, unable to put thoughts into words, presses his face against Markus’ shoulder as his hand reaches up, skin drifting away from his fingertips.

Markus reaches forward, threads their fingers together as his skin melts away.

 

It’s… difficult to put into words.

Markus is hit with a million things at once. A million tangled fragments of memories, a million thoughts and emotions. He catches a sliver of the two of them, kissing for the very first time in the room he recognizes from Jericho’s office. He catches a tumbling memory of their first night together, twisted together in sheets but not the first time they had sex, which comes trailing behind it, Connor hiding beneath his arms, beneath a pillow, trying to his best to shield his face. He’s struck hard with the first memory of Connor _really_ smiling as big and as happy as he could ever.

He is hit with a feeling that rocks through his chest hard, of _love_ and _happiness_ spilling through his veins, flooding it so heavily he is sure that it was what his body ran on instead of Thirium during those times.

He is hit with the times they argued, the times that they were sad, the times that weren’t good at all but still clung onto them.

He is hit with a feeling of a gun shot to his stomach, of falling backwards into Connor’s arms.

And then he is ripped away.

 

Markus is gasping for air, clutching the back of Connor’s shirt like it is the only thing holding him up. Markus is using him for support more than Connor is using him.

Those were not Connor’s memories.

They were—

But they _weren’t._

He didn’t see them through Connor’s eyes. He saw them through his own.

“I loved you,” Connor’s voice is cracking, voice modulator not working correctly. It is flooded with static as he repeats it again and again.

And he knows he loved Connor, too. There is no denying that now. There is no pretending that they weren’t desperately, achingly in love.

 

 

_Before;_

It’s first whispered to him when they are sprawled on the couch. Connor’s head laying against Markus’ chest, eyes shut tight in the hopes when he falls asleep it will be a peaceful, dreamless sleep. Markus has his arms wrapped around him, the only sound other than their slow, steady breathing is the faint chatter of the television.

“I love you.”

The words are so quiet he almost doesn’t hear it at first, feels like he needs to replay it again and again to be sure.

He assumes that Markus thinks he’s asleep, and he lets him. He doesn’t let his body tense, doesn’t let the words come out of his mouth even though he wants to.

But he whispers it back when he knows Markus is asleep. A full, atrociously slow, ten minutes later.

“I love you, too.”

 

 

_After;_

He stays with Connor that night. He slumps down into the bed beside him and they keep their distance, although, not as far as they could go. They are not pressed to the edged of the bed ready to slip off at any second, but there is a space between them that seems so vast it’s hard to believe if he inched closer, it would be gone.

Markus lets Connor hold onto his hand, their connection gone but still linked together. He watches Connor’s thumb make lazy circles against his skin until they slowly stop and Connor falls asleep.

Markus could probably leave and wouldn’t be noticed. Connor might even want him to.

But he wants to stay. It feels like a betrayal to leave now.

And—

There is a soft flutter of peace disguising Connor’s features. It’s a slow process as his face relaxes, lets go off all the despair and misery in minute details. It is such a strange occurrence to see him not on the verge of tears that Markus wants to imprint this on his memory forever.

 

_Before;_

Markus is asleep in the chair by the window when he gets home, the lights in the apartment off and the curtains open, the setting sun illuminating the room in soft rays. There’s a book laying open in his lap, but the way Markus is slumped backwards Connor knows he chose to fall asleep here. A rare moment of peace that he has taken advantage of.

Connor steps over, gingerly picks the book up off his lap, marks the page with the chevron patterned bookmark that has drifted to the floor, sets it on the windowsill beside him.

Markus is always beautiful. He is always the most stunning person that Connor has ever seen. But sometimes, his beauty hits Connor all over again. The way the faint light of the sun casts shadows across his face, the way it plays up every infinitesimal detail that Connor has memorized long ago—

His hand reaches forward, grazes softly against his jaw, trails across the line of it.

And his wrist is caught quickly, Markus eyes fluttering open.

“Did I wake you?” Connor asks. The hold on him loosens enough for Markus’ fingers to move from his wrist to his palm.

A small smile spreads across his face, “No. Yes. I don’t really know. You ever just drift in between being asleep and awake?”

He can’t help but think _no, he hasn’t._ Connor is always acutely aware of whether or not he’s asleep by the pain in his spine or his head or his hands. Sleep always leaves a mark on his body somewhere, engraved in his bones.

“Were you watching me?” Markus asks, an expert at knowing when to change the subject.

“You’re very handsome,” Connor replies. “I’m sorry.”

“You lose yourself in my beauty?” he asks, smiling.

“Well,” he says, and the hint of humor in his voice comes naturally, even if he means the words, albeit not in the joking manner he says them. “You are a god among men. You bless us all with your existence, and you question why we don’t get blinded by it? You’re the most exquisite person alive. To ever exist in this world. To ever exist, ever.”

“Past, present, future?” Markus asks, tilting his head to the side, drawing Connor’s fingers to his lips, leaving a kiss against his knuckles.

“Past, present, future.”

“I do have competition,” he says, letting Connor’s hand fall back to his lap. “It’s not as if this is easy.”

“Oh?” Connor asks, mimicking the tilt of Markus’ head. “And who is it?”

“Sumo, obviously.”

Connor smiles more than he already is, it breaks his face open, cracks it with a small laugh. He has been happy, of course. He has smiled, of course. But this is different. This is almost _new._ He has never smiled so widely, has always been aware of trying to keep some control over his features.

“I love you,” Markus says.

His face doesn’t fall so much as the smile slips back to his normal small one, teeth biting at his bottom lip.

It’s the first time Markus has said it to him when he knew Connor could hear him.

He leans forward, kisses Markus slowly, deeply, doesn’t want to let go.

But he does, because he needs to say it back.

“I love you, too.”

 

 

_After;_

It is like an infectious disease. The fragments that he was given to by Connor seem to grow, not in number, but in size. Markus can remember more of each piece. He can remember the little whine in Connor’s voice when he pulled away from kissing him to remove their shirts. He can remember the words he said to Connor after their first kiss. He can remember saying he loved him, of Connor telling it back to him.

Markus wishes he could know if the feeling growing in his chest truly belongs to him or if it was gifted to him by the memories, confusing his actual thoughts with the things he felt in those moments. If this is him remembering who he was, becoming the old Markus again, or just being attacked with them.

He knows Connor didn’t intend this. He was trying to show him his grief, he was trying to show him what he lost, to explain the state that Markus had found him in.

But now there is a feeling caught in his throat whenever he sees him. It is difficult not to cross the room and take Connor’s face in his hands and kiss him. It’s difficult not to want to pull him close to his chest when he sees how tired and weary and sad Connor is when he comes home from work.

He loves him.

But he doesn’t know if _he_ loves him.

 

 

“I’m going to bed,” Connor says, leaning against the entrance to the hallway, watching Markus sit on the couch and read, although he isn’t really reading. He keeps reading the same line over and over again trying to focus his thoughts on the pages and the words rather than the boy.

He looks up at him, watches the way his eyes are staring so softly back at him.

Connor’s never told him that he’s going to bed. It’s just something Markus notices late at night when the light that leaks out from underneath his door disappears.

“Can you—” Connor starts, eyes looking away from him, down to the floor.

“Yes.”

The book is set aside, the lights are turned off, Markus follows Connor to the bedroom, lays down opposite of him on the bed.

“Thank you,” Connor whispers.

He doesn’t know if it is for being here or for saving Connor from having to ask those words like a scared child. A brief part of him wishes he had allowed Connor to ask. It would’ve been nice to hear something asked of him instead of by him.

Markus reaches out between them, lays his hand over Connor’s, trails his fingers along the joints in his.

But he wants to be touching Connor’s face. He wants to be leaving the trail of his fingers along his cheek, along his jaw, brushing over his lips.

He wants to talk about this thing growing inside of his chest. He wants to spill every detail about the things he’s remembered or hasn’t remembered. He wants to talk about the feeling of knowing Connor has walked with him to see Jericho sunken into the water before, of knowing that he has held him against his chest before.

But he can’t get Connor’s hopes up.

Because he can’t tell if that is him or not. He is someone new entirely. He is floating in-between identities.

No longer just amnesiac-Markus, no longer just Connor’s-lover-Markus. Something new entirely.

He wishes he knew what it was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> asdjf i'm gonna be gone for about a week and a half and I'm not sure if I'll be able to write while I'm away but I will still b checking my tumblr if anyone wants to message me there in the meantime <3
> 
> Writing/Editing Music:  
> Discoloration - Dawn Golden


	5. more than you know

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I can’t not be with you, Nathan. I wanted to leave you in that grave and walk away but I couldn’t. I can’t walk ten paces away from you without it hurting me. I treasure every second with you. Every second. More than you know.” -- Half Wild / Sally Green
> 
>  
> 
> a quick clarification: this chapter switches the pov around so Connor is in the present, Markus in the past. It will resume back the other way after this!

_ Before; _

Markus wakes up to the feeling of Connor moving. A soft hit against his chest, a tiny murmured whimper from his lips. A long time ago, Markus had set his sensitivity levels when sleeping as low as possible while still being able to rest. Sometimes he wakes to the sound of sirens outside their window, sometimes it’s the sound of the people living in the apartments beside, above, below them.

Most of the time, though, it’s Connor.

Connor, gasping out his name. Connor, screaming as he is violently dying in whatever memory he is swimming through. Connor, thrashing, fighting, trying to wake himself up.

Tonight he wakes, blinks away the grogginess of the sleep mode and reaches forward, pressing his hands against Connor’s shoulders, shaking him lightly to wake him up, saying his name gently, but not quietly.

Connor’s eyes fly open and Markus watches as he adjusts to the room, to the present.

He never knows what to say.

_ You’re okay  _ is a lie. Connor is not okay. Not in times like these. Maybe, perhaps, throughout the day he is, but at night, when the dreams creep in, when they wrap their claws around him, dig in deep to his flesh, rip him apart--

He is not okay.

_ You’re alive  _ is true, but could only bring attention to the fact that Connor has died. Multiple times. Multiple  _ violent  _ times.

This time he settles for a kiss against Connor’s forehead, pulling him close, whispering how much he loves him over and over again until he knows for certain that Connor will never forget it.

__  
  


_ After; _

When Connor first saw him alive again, there was a tiny flicker in his chest. It beat dangerously, burned bright white. He watched as Markus exited those doors, looked over at him with the sudden hope that told him everything was going to be right again, back to the way it should be.

This world could not go on without Markus. It would surely crumble without him.

Markus’ soul must have been one that has traveled from generation, kept with each event of the world to nudge it in the proper direction until now when whatever powerful being that presided over them finally decided he needed to be immortal, that he would be placed into the body of an android so he could stay for as long as possible.

It’s a silly thought--not one that Connor would actually believe would happen in the end, but one that he puts his faith into either way. If Markus died, he would be back again. It was comforting to think about when he had died in his arms. A reassurance that this was not the end.

But this was different. He saw it in the Markus had walked towards him, the way he didn’t rush towards Connor the way Connor was rushing towards him.

And then,

Finally,

The part that destroyed him,

Were his eyes.

Two perfectly, beautifully green eyes.

__  
  


_ Before; _

He wondered, in that moment, with Connor’s gun pointed at his head, if they had met under any other circumstances what their relationship would be like.

And later, when they lived together, he wondered again. He wondered when he saw Connor scrubbing the dirt and grime off of his body. He wondered when Connor reached to pluck a book from the shelf. He wondered when they kissed and Connor would pull him towards the counter or the couch or the bed because he wanted more and wasn’t going to let Markus pull away this time.

If they were two humans, would they have just passed by each other on the street and never say a word? Would they have stumbled across each other at some point and know, in that instance, that one could not exist without the other? That they were completely, dangerously, in love? Could their paths cross and nothing come of it?

Could he have been just a simple, human caretaker for Carl, somehow stumbling across the life of simple, human detective Connor? Would they know in that moment, like Markus knew in the moment a gun was pressed to his head, that their fates were somehow tangled? A mess that neither of them, even now, could quite understand.

If Markus remained a machine, would they have ever seen each other? Would they have lived their entire lives as just androids completing their tasks, following their programming, never to see each other ever again?

Were they even fated to meet? Or was it simply just how this version of their lives played out?

He could have died so many times before Connor arrived in Jericho, but he hadn’t.

Is that a sign?

Or just wishful thinking?

__  
  


_ After; _

Connor was warned, of course, that Markus had lost his memory. He didn’t forget that when he saw Markus’ face. It was just the  _ hope  _ that maybe he was told wrongly, that somehow he had misheard the things that people had told him.

And every day it is more and more clear that everything has changed, that he  _ has  _ lost Markus. That the person inside of his apartment, sleeping on the spare bed in the extra room, is not  _ his  _ Markus.

His Markus is dead. He is gone. He died in Connor’s arms.

He can still feel the Thirium against his hands. He can still smell the thick scent of it, like window cleaner. He’s sure he can still see traces of it on his palm if he looks closely enough, even if he has scrubbed himself clean so roughly that he has left scratches on the plastic surface.

When Connor wakes, he has to remind himself not go to Markus and kiss him. He has to remind himself that the bed empty beside him will not be filled again. Or, at least, not for a very long time. There is always a possibility he can love again.

It is just so far off he can’t consider it even as an option now.

But he so desperately wants to allow himself to slip back into his memories, to let them wrap around his body like water in the ocean and sink down into them and never return. Drown himself in Markus’ smiles, Markus’ kisses, Markus’ touch.

He’s sure he could. He’s sure he could break his programming and force himself to live on a loop of all the happy memories of his life.

If he did, he would essentially be killing himself. He’s not sure he could return after that.

__  
  


_ Before; _

The first time they meet after November 11th is two months later.

It’s taken far longer than Markus would like, if he were to be honest. He thinks about Connor often. He wants to know how the boy deals with his slip into deviancy. He wants to know what it is like for someone to switch from being programmed to hunt deviants, to  _ stop  _ him, to being a deviant himself. to allowing himself to feel all those emotions that have been denied and buried under layers of ones and zeros.

But it’s not as if he can ask, no matter how badly he wants to. Or, at least, not in such a blunt way. He could ask how Connor is doing, he could not ask all the gory details about what it must be like to become the very thing he was meant to destroy.

And it isn’t the only reason that he is drawn to Connor. He can feel a connection between them. Beyond the fact that Connor helped him win against the government. Beyond the fact they are both RK models, both prototypes. Markus wishes he could be as superficial to place it all on the fact Connor is simply cute.

When he gets his first free moment from all the meetings and the documents, he doesn’t spend it resting like he should. Instead, he heads to Connor’s place. Looking it up in his mind is easy. Connor’s home address was installed in their database. The inside man on the DPD that could tell them about statistics involving crimes against androids. The real numbers--not the ones that the DPD tells the press in the hopes that they can slide by unnoticed.

Markus knocks twice before Connor opens the door, behind him the apartment is left in a mess of furniture move to the side or laying half built in the center.

And he remembers, quite suddenly, that the address had only been updated a week ago.

“Is this a bad time?” he asks.

Connor glances behind him, a blush spreading across his face.

“No,” he says. “Well, I suppose yes. But there isn’t anything that would destroy something if I were to leave it alone for more than a few minutes.”

“And after that?”

“I suppose the hammer might come to life and start hitting the floor, which would be quite unfortunate for the people below me,” Connor says, biting his lip to keep from smiling, but he does anyways. A small one that stretches barely across his face. The faint traces of something more. “Did you need something?”

He realizes he doesn’t have an excuse to be here and how hard it is to say  _ I wanted to see you,  _ because as true as it is, it seems awkward coming from him when they have had little to no contact for so long.

Markus tries for a different tactic, but still an honest one, “I wanted to see how you were doing. You’re living on your own now. That’s pretty different from before, isn’t it?.”

Connor’s smile fades, he bites his lower lip a little harder.

“I’m okay.”

_ Okay. _

“Are you sure?” Markus asks.

There’s a long pause before Connor gives a small shrug, a tiny nod. He could press further, could force Connor to spill every detail about his life that has gone wrong, but he can’t. He doesn’t want to put their relationship on a path like that.

Instead, he asks, “Can I come in? I’m good at building things. I could help you. Or, at least, keep an eye on that hammer when you aren’t using it.”

A ghost of a smile plays at Connor’s lips, makes his eye brighten a little bit. It doesn’t matter that Markus lied about building things. He could learn in the moment. They could laugh at how terrible they both are, how unnecessary to the both of them knowing these skills were until now.

“I would like that,” Connor says, moving aside.

__  
  


_ After; _

A month passes of awkward silence between them, of snippets of conversation, of Connor pulling further and further away while Markus chases after him.

And then he’s asking for niceties. And then he’s cut his finger. And then he’s holding Connor and he’s letting all of those memories flood from him to Markus.

It was a mistake. He hadn’t meant to do that.

When Markus told him that he could help, Connor hadn’t been able to put it into words. He couldn’t boil anything down into one single sentence. There’s too much. There is always too much. It is filling him to the brim and overflowing and spilling everywhere and he can’t act quick enough to clean it up.

So he reached his hand upwards, let the skin slide away from the plastic shell underneath, brought all the memories to his fingertips.

When Markus’ hand slid into his, what he originally planned to show him had fallen away and was replaced with  _ them. _

At first he couldn’t pull away.

He was seeing all of the things between them that he loved. He was enraptured with his own past, reliving the feeling of falling in love, of kissing Markus for the first time, of arguments long past and long forgotten and always so trivial.

Connor yanked backwards quickly. He didn’t want  _ this  _ Markus to see those things. They don’t belong to him. They will  _ never  _ belong to him.

And then he felt the weight of Markus leaning against him, the two of them supporting each other on the bed, both seconds from crumbling underneath the other’s weight. He feels violently nauseous with the guilt when they lay down, when Markus stays with him through the night and the next.

But it is hard to let go of him.

__  
  


_ Before; _

Androids live a privileged life of not necessarily needing to sleep. It benefits them to an extreme amount and, of course, it allows them a break from the emotions they have to shoulder in their day-to-day life, but during Markus’ entire time with Jericho, he slept very little. It’s carried over with him as the months pass.

He can’t bring himself to go up to the second floor of Carl’s house. He has North empty the bookshelves up there, has Connor fill them up again, sends Josh to fetch anything that is needed.

Carl’s death is an open wound. It is still bleeding, blood vessels stinging and raw.

When he is tired,  he opts for the couch, but only when exhaustion has worn him down so far that he can’t even keep his eyes open and he sleeps for as long as he can before North or Josh have arrived at the house-turned-office and shake him awake, tell him that there are things to do, people to help.

But occasionally he is lucky to spend his nights with Connor, who is equally terrible at sleeping as he is. It’s nice to spend the nights awake, sitting beside each other and watching the television, reading books (a long process to get Connor to read slower, to enjoy the words more), or simply just pressed against each other, hands roaming, lips parted.

Tonight is different than their other nights, though. They are both so far beyond tiredness that all that is left are two androids staring at a screen with no information sinking in at all.

Markus is the first to fall asleep, eyes slipping closed as the girl on the television rushes through the rain to her lover as a hopeful song plays in the background. Connor is the second to fall asleep, head falling from where it leans against his hand as the show switches from a dramatic reveal to commercials for food that no human should eat lest they want to die of heart disease.

He wakes to the feeling of Connor kicking him hard and his eyes open slowly, trying to gauge how much time has passed in his web of dreams. He glances upwards, tries to make out Connor’s face in the blur of darkness, only lit by the flashing lights of a movie playing. They are sitting on opposite sides of the couch, their feet stretched and laying side by side in the space between. Connor is moving, his face twitching as he feet kick outwards again.

A little like a dog having a dream of chasing a cat.

This is different, though. Vastly different.

Markus can tell how Connor’s features have shifted from fatigue or the dimmed happiness of the day to twisted with torment.

He moves quickly, reaching awkwardly across the couch to shake Connor’s shoulders but it fails to wake him at first and he has to lay across Connor’s chest, shout his name loudly before he wakes up.

Connor’s eyes open, but he isn’t moving. His chest isn’t even rising and failing with the fake breath that they have been designed with.

“Are you okay?” he asks, the fear in his veins growing colder and colder. “Connor? Are you alright? It was just a dream. It was just a dream, you’re okay.”

Connor slowly adjusts to reality, his face shifting slightly from agony to being creased with  anguish. His mouth moves, just barely, as breath returns. He doesn’t say anything, but Markus can tell he wants to.

He leans backwards, pulls himself from the couch so he can sit beside Connor a little better, can pull him into a hug that ends with a choked sob against his shoulder.

He doesn’t know what to do, so he simply holds him and whispers like a chant.

_ You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re okay. _

He does not know yet how wrong he is.

__  
  


_ After; _

The third morning Markus sleeping in the bed beside him, he is hit all over again with the guilt and the grief and the absolute need to close the space between them and press a kiss to his spot on Markus’ jaw.

But he doesn’t.

Connor slinks out of the bed as slowly, as quietly, as expertly as he can. He dresses quickly, leaves the apartment with as much speed as he can without waking Markus.

In the last month he has thrown himself in his work. He has surrounded himself, quite literally, with files and folders and papers on crimes that haven’t been solved in the last twenty five years. He’s closed a few of them. Gave a few widows their answers, locked up a few creeps still lingering on the streets, connected the dots between the ones that have been looked over.

And in his free time--

His mind wanders back to that day. Markus on the ground, blue blood leaking across the asphalt.

They have leads on the killer. They have a whole board dedicated to solving who it was, to put a name to the face, a face to the name. They know who killed Markus. But they don’t know  _ who  _ killed Markus.

The only thing more painful than having Markus die in his arms was having to watch Hank put his picture next to the other five victims that weren’t lucky enough to be able to reboot.

Although, Connor would argue that Markus wasn’t lucky just because his body came back. His memories are all gone. Markus is still dead. He is still a victim.

He watches the board from where he sits at his desk, tapping his fingers against the surface as he tries to rip his eyes from the board but they only wander to a different part.

Pictures of weapons used. Knives. Bats. Guns.

Pictures of other faces. A PL600. A WR400. A RK200.

Pictures of the places they were killed. A motel. Their home. An alleyway.

Pictures of the things that link their murders together. A carving of the CyberLife logo somewhere on their skin. And, drawn in their blood somewhere near their body: YOU’RE JUST A MACHINE.

Or, in the case of Markus, spoken to him outloud.

Whoever the killer is--this is not murder to them.

“Hey, robo-boy.”

He hates that he looks up to the voice, like it’s giving Gavin permission to call him  _ robo-boy.  _ But he is, stupidly, grateful that his attention has been pulled from those pictures, even if it is for one of the least clever insults directed at him.

“What?”

“Did you see that?” Gavin asks, pointing towards a man in Fowler’s office, dressed neatly in white and black, pretty gray eyes, neat brown hair.

Nice little letting on his jacket. RK900.

Connor looks away, has to keep himself from biting down hard on his tongue.

“Looks like you got competition,” he says, leaning against the wall. “He’s much cuter than you.”

“Then have fun with him,” Connor replies.

“You know he’s taller than you?” he continues. “Why’d they do that? And is that the only thing they made bigger?”

“Go find out for yourself.”

“I have nothing to compare it to.”

Connor looks back towards Gavin, can feel rage boiling in his stomach, not quite sure how to express it.

“You have a shitty way of flirting,” he says, opting for a likely Hank-approved route. Although, he thinks, perhaps all of his interactions with Gavin would be Hank-approved. Connor tries his best ot channel the same venom that Hank uses towards him. “If that’s what this is.”

“Not flirting,” he says. “Putting it out there.”

“If you want to have sex with an android, you should have done it while the Eden Club was still operational.”

Gavin lets out a laugh, takes a step closer to the desk.

“So you’re saying being locked in that apartment with your dead boyfriend doesn’t make all your little wires frustrated?”

“If you’re so desperate, I’m sure there are prostitutes somewhere in Detroit still, Detective Reed,” Connor replies, his voice cracking on the words in the attempt not to punch him in the face. “Although I’m sure they would have to double their price to even think about sleeping with you.”

“The thing is, Connor,” he says, and he turns the chair so that they’re face to face, far too close for comfort. “Maybe I just want you.”

“What’s changed?” he asks, tilting his head to the side. “You used to hate me. Now you suddenly want me?”

“I said maybe,” and he pulls away, just barely. “But, if you want honesty, I’ve got a bet with my pal.”

Connor reaches up, presses his hands gently against Gavin’s collar, leans in a little like he might kiss Gavin. When a smile flickers across his face, Connor shoves him backwards with enough force that he stumbles and hits the wall behind him hard.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Gavin says, shaking his head slightly. “Just say no next time.”

“I think I did quite a few times, but you didn’t seem to get the hint,” Connor replies. “I thought maybe violence was the way to go. It seems to be the only language you are actually fluent in besides for utter stupidity.”

“Like you’re so fucking smart,” he says, half reaching forward like he’s going to do something. What, exactly, Connor doesn’t know. “You can’t even solve your boyfriend’s murder.”

He says it like the answer is obvious, like he could do it in a second.

Connor glances back towards the board, catches the blank expression Markus wears in his picture, can’t help but think of how much his Markus smiled or how the one at home wears the same blankness, too.

__  
  


_ Before; _

The last of the boxes from Markus’ move settle down into a messy mountain they’ve created by the front door. There’s very little, considering a human’s amount they would take with them in a move. The majority of it is art supplies, neatly categorized into boxes and labeled with perfect CyberLife Sans in a black marker on the side.

The majority of his clothes are already here, folded up and placed in Connor’s half empty dresser. Not that Markus was the one to put them there. Connor has a way of stealing sweaters and jackets whenever they are free from his body. He’s like a dragon, creating a pile of clothes to protect instead of gold.

“We should unpack,” Connor says, setting his box down at the base of the mountain, rounding it out so it fades up into a point a little bit better. “Now that everything is here.”

“Or,” Markus says, tugging Connor towards him by the sleeve of his sweater. It’s a soft blue, dark and worn but made to look like it rather than ending up that way. It’s definitely one of his. It’s too big for Connor’s frame, doesn’t quite drown him but is too long, the sleeves rolled back so Connor can use his hands. “We could wait until tomorrow.”

Connor leans against him, presses a soft kiss to his jaw, another to the sliver of his neck that’s exposed under the high collar of his sweater.

“I have work tomorrow,” Connor says quietly, lips brushing against his skin. “I won’t be here to help.”

“I think I can handle it on my own,” he says, arms sliding around to pull Connor closer to him than he already is. He can feel the soft beat of his heart between the fabrics of their shirts.

“You’re supposed to be the responsible one,” Connor whispers.

His hands reach up under the hem of his shirt, slide against Connor’s skin slowly.

“Am I?”

“I’ve run into streets and fallen off rooftops,” he replies, his voice growing quiet and quieter. Not in the mourning of a lost body, not in the memory of pain or death, just quiet, like he’s giving up on trying to get out of this little distraction of a conversation. “I think the title of  _ responsible  _ applies to you a little bit more than me.”

“Only a little?”

“It’s hard to gauge.”

Markus laughs, turns his head so he can press his lips to Connor’s forehead.

And it’s like a switch flips.

Because suddenly they are kissing hard and heavy, sliding against each other and stumbling backwards, backwards, backwards until they are against the counter and Markus is turning so he can lift Connor up onto it.

He isn’t a virgin, but they haven’t slept together. Connor’s heavily guarded, lets Markus’ hands roam and caress and press into him, lets his lips go as far as neck before he would stop him. It doesn’t bother him. He doesn’t need this.

Just that wants this.

_ Needs  _ in a different way.

There’s a tiny noise that escapes Connor’s mouth and into his when Markus’ hand moves from his back to his waist again. It’s the same place it was before but it’s changed somehow. He’s about to pull away, to ask Connor if it’s okay when Connor retreats first.

“Not here,” he mumbles, sliding off the counter. He loops his fingers through Markus’ belt loops, pulls him as he walks backwards towards the bedroom. He doesn’t offer any further explanation, and Markus doesn’t bother to ask.

When Connor lets him go, he steps backwards slowly, pulls the stolen sweater over his head, drops it to the ground, his hands go to pull the second shirt over his head when Markus steps forward and stops him, breaks the movement with a gentle kiss.

“If you’re not ready, it’s fine.”

“I’m ready,” Connor says, an almost offended tone to his voice. Markus can’t tell if it’s a joke or not. “It’s not… like I haven’t done it before.”

“You have?”

“No,” Connor says, his face flushing bright. “I… I’ve had to scan the memories of androids at the Eden Club. It’s not the same but I’m not completely clueless.”

Markus smiles, reaches forward and holds Connor’s face still as he kisses him hard but briefly.

“We can’t stop whenever you want,  _ if  _ you want.”

There’s a tiny almost imperceptible nod from Connor before Markus reaches forward, helps drag the last shirt off of his body.

Markus’ gaze sweeps over his chest, taking in everything that he has not seen yet. Considering all the times Connor has died, he almost expects to see scars lining his skin. Like this is the same body that got hit by a car or fell off a roof. But it is bare, perfectly clean. Not a single mark on his body.

“We’re uneven,” Connor says suddenly, a little too loudly. Markus looks up towards his face, cheeks still flushed, eyes almost averted completely to the other side of the room.

Markus pulls his own sweater up, tosses it to the side where Connor’s lay. Where it will likely be stolen by Connor like it always is. In a few months, he doubt he will ever be able to tell the difference between whose clothes are whose besides for the makeshift uniform Connor wears to his work.

“I didn’t--” he lets out a long sigh. “I didn’t mean clothing wise. I did--but I didn’t.”

“You did but you didn’t?” Markus asks, and he can’t help but smile. It feels a little mean to get any kind of amusement out of how flustered Connor is right now but he can’t help it. He’s never seen him like this before.

“You slept with other androids at Jericho, didn’t you?” Connor says, finally meeting his gaze for the briefest of moments before it falls downwards, starring quite obviously at the marked skin of Markus’ body where the skin doesn’t line up quite right from bullet holes and other wounds.

“Yes,” he says.

“Who was your first?”

He bites his lip, doesn’t want to answer.

“Just a guy I was friends with. It wasn’t… anything, really.”

He’s lying.

“I didn’t need it to be special,” he continues, hates himself for it, can’t bring himself to tell Connor all the explicit details of the first person he knows he truly could have loved. “It was just a fling. A mistake, sort of.”

Connor steps forward, closing their tiny gap, pressing their chests together, lifting his head so he can kiss Markus gently before he pulls away to speak.

“I wish things could have been different.”

Not  _ I wish it was me,  _ like Markus had been expecting him to say.

Just  _ I wish things could have been different. _

“It’s in the past,” Markus whispers, a hand reaching up to pull Connor’s lips back to his. “You’re my present and my future.”

They stumble their way to the bed, fumbling with their pants and their belts and their shoes before they are climbing in, before Markus is trailing hands along Connor’s naked body, making their way down his perfectly unmarked chest, settling momentarily on his hips, dragging slowly across his thighs before fingers wrap softly around Connor’s cock, sliding upwards and down, his movements slow.

It takes only seconds for Connor to cover his face, to drape his arms over and hide his flushed cheeks, to quiet the tiny moans he lets escape.

It is so appealing, so entertaining to watch him come undone. So perfectly composed even now. His guard is so rarely let down, so rarely falls around him. His smiles are never as big as they could be, jokes always die on his lips when they are half done. When they kiss, the majority of the time it is Markus chasing him down or egging him on.

He reaches forward, one hand still moving slowly up and down, the other pulling Connor’s hands away from his face.

“I want to see you,” he whispers and is returned with a moan that is caught quickly, silenced with a bite to his lower lip. Connor’s eye look towards him, close tightly, head tipped back as Markus moves his hand a little quicker.

“I can’t,” he whispers. “I’m too--”

“Embarrassed?”

His hand stills but Connor moves beneath him, angles his hip upwards slightly.

_ Needy. _

He’s too needy. He wants this too badly. He has been holding back and pushing Markus away and now he’s slipping down the rabbit hole of  _ want, _ finding his way onto  _ need. _

“Please.”

“Please?”

He moves again, sliding against Markus hand and hesitates until Connor opens his eyes again He’s blushing so heavily it’s almost too cute for him to ignore. He hopes he remembers this moment for the rest of his life, commits it to every corner of his mind.

Composed detective Connor reduced to this and so quickly, too.

His hand moves again, quickens it’s pace. Connor’s fingers clutch the blanket he lays on, presses his face sideways to cover it as best as he can, doesn’t return his arms to hide him again. He still bites his lip, still clenches his jaw and holds back his moans until there is an unintelligible slew of words broken at the end by a moan he can’t quiet. Markus feels the shudder of his body, the cum between his fingers, spreading back down and up again as he keeps stroking Connor’s cock  until he’s done moving his hips with him, until he is panting and still beneath Markus.

“I-I’m sorry,” Connor mumbles. “I didn’t--”

“Why are you apologizing?” Markus asks, leaning forward to kiss him. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

There’s a mumble of words that aren’t quite words that are quickly quieted by Markus kissing him again.

“Give me a second.”

He leaves, returns quickly with a towel to wipe away the mess spread across Connor’s stomach.

But the way he lays there, looking so innocent and so disheveled and so lewd, it makes Markus want to throw the towel off to the side, to climb on him and kiss him until the sun rises and Connor’s late to work and will have to call in, have to quit his job, because Markus never plans on leaving this bed ever again.

“What?”

“I love you,” he says.

Connor smiles, turns his face again so he can hide the blush creeping up onto his face. Markus steps forward, cleans him up, wipes away the wetness on his fingers.

“I love you, too,” Connor says, turning to face him again. “More than anything.”

He bends over him, kisses Connor lightly but it turns deep, Connor pulling him downwards hard until he’s laying flat across him, their skin pressed together so tightly with such little room he’s sure they could dissolve into one another.

He’s turned over, Connor straddling him, hands moving to press against his stomach as he leans upwards.

Androids are privileged. There is little recovery time in between these things, albeit their sensitivity raises each time. Makes them lower and lower until they could cum barely touched, with the thought of someone pushing inside of them.

Markus reaches up, hands resting on either side of Connor’s thighs. Just the touch, so close yet so far, elicits a tiny gasp from Connor. He can only imagine what noises he would make if he didn’t constantly try to hold them back. They’d wake up everyone in the city, likely.

Connor’s hand guides him as he sinks backwards. Markus is enraptured with the way his mouth falls open, the way his eyes fall shut as he is pressed into Connor.

He’s so close to the edge and they’ve barely done anything.

Connor is the one to move. Slowly, at first. Always slowly. The room is quiet except their breathing, except for the half-moans, half-breaths escaping from their lips. Markus wants to pull him downwards, to kiss him so he can see what it tastes like on his tongue. The thickness of pleasure passing between them, the way it electrifies the air.

He speeds up more and more until he comes to a pause, looks down at Markus with teeth biting his lip and his body half slouched forward.

“It’s… t-too much,” he mumbles, barely gets the word out. “I don’t know if I can--”

He is cut off with a loud gasp as Markus moves beneath him, hands gone from Connor’s thighs and at his hips instead, moving quicker than Connor was and fastening his pace more and more. Connor falls forward, collapses against his chest, moans lost in the space between his neck and his shoulder. They get louder and louder until Connor is shuddering against his body over and over again and Markus follows quickly behind, his own noises lost into the air.

They stay like that for a second, wet and hot and stuck together. Markus’ hands glide up Connor’s spine, trailing their way vertebrae by vertebrae until he reaches the back of his neck and trails back down again.

He can feel Connor getting hard against his stomach again, can hear the words being breathed against his neck.

“You’re ruining me, Markus,” he says.

Markus smiles, presses a kiss against the top of his head, his hand stilling at his lower back. Connor’s own hand moves, skates across Markus’ side, rests flat against his chest.

“I love you,” Connor whispers.

It seems it can never be said too many times between them.

“Even though I’m ruining you?”

“Especially because you’re ruining me.”

__  
  


_ After; _

There is a brief four hours between when Connor gets home from work and when he sleeps that things are alright. Not good, but liveable. It’s a long enough time that he is able to shrug off some of the weight at feeling like he is using Markus and a few hours time before he is reminded again that he is, in fact, undeniably, using this new Markus to cope.

Often, they sit on the couch across from each other, reading in silence, only stopping to comment on something if they’re in the middle of a book the other has read already. He has to stifle his smiles when Markus reacts to something, even if it is in an entirely different way than he had before.

It’s both concerning and comforting knowing how  _ different  _ they are from each other.

It’s both concering and comforting knowing how  _ similar  _ they are to each other.

Tonight, though, Markus has taken it upon himself to transfer the files North gave him to the television, letting it play the soft notes of songs that Connor has heard him play countless times out of the speakers and flooding the apartment.

They don’t have a piano here, but Connor has visited Jericho’s new office enough times during his breaks throughout the day to see Markus. They spend it reading, sometimes. Or just talking. Or pressed somewhere against a wall or a desk devouring one another. But it always,  _ always  _ ends with the two of them sitting on the piano bench, side by side, Markus’ trying to teach him how to play.

Connor could learn if he really wanted to, but he knows nothing he plays will ever match the beauty of the songs that Markus can make and he doesn’t even want to try.

And now, seeing Markus stand, head tilted and listening to the music, he is back there in that room with him, sitting at the bench, Markus beside him, trying to tell him how to lay his fingers and read music.

“Do you want to dance?” Connor asks, the question comes out so easily and he regrets it the instant he says it.

Markus’ eyes flicker from the blank screen of the television towards him. He hesitates for a long moment before he finally responds with, “I don’t know how.”

“I can teach you,” and he kicks himself for saying it, but he is already stepping over towards him, reaching his hand out. It can’t be that difficult to teach him. He knew once. Maybe it wasn’t part of Markus’ programming, but he knew. He is capable of knowing again.

“Who taught you?” Markus asks, following where Connor directs his hands, one on his waist, the other held out to the side in Connor’s.

He doesn’t reply to Markus because he wants to pretend that he hadn’t heard it, that maybe Markus would come to his own conclusion of it simply being in the skill set he was given instead of having been  _ taught  _ by anyone.

They start to dance, question forgotten in their movements. It is not as graceful of a dance as it should be. Connor has to take the lead and doesn’t know the steps as well as he thought he did. It wasn’t as if him and Markus really danced all that much. It was always something that they held close, preferred it to be done on their anniversary like they were celebrating their first kiss.

It seems so silly now.

“Don’t look at your feet,” Connor says, catching Markus’ glance downwards. “It’ll make it worse. You have to not think about it. You have to just let it go. If you focus too much on where your feet are, they will never move the way you want them to.”

Markus’ mouth twitches for a second and he stills, Connor is mid-step and stops-- _ stumbles _ a little too close to Markus’ chest. He feels the hand on his waist move slightly, wrap a little tighter around his back. He can’t tell if it was to catch him in what could have been a fall or if it is meant to pull him closer.

“Who taught you how to dance?” Markus asks again.

“You did,” and Connor says it so breathlessly it is barely more than a whisper.

He feels the hand in his disappear, touch his chin lightly, pull it up so that they are a little more level.

He knows that Markus is going to kiss him.

After everything--after how Connor has been treating him--Markus wants to kiss him.

His hand on Markus’ shoulder twitches, wants to move to his neck, to pull him downwards--like he did before.

_ Like he did before. _

But Markus is quicker than he is, leans down to press his lips to Connor’s--like he did before.

_ Like he did before. _

He pulls away, shoves Markus backwards to get more distance between them.

“I’m sorry,” he says, his voice so heavy with grief he’s not even sure if Markus can understand the words. “I can’t.”

“Connor--”

He leaves to his room, closes the door behind him and collapses against it.

He showed that memory to Markus. He knows it was caught in the net that he pressed into his palm. He doesn’t know if Markus did it on purpose. He doesn’t know if it was for torture or if it was just a coincidence.

Connor was the one that brought up the dancing.

He has to remind himself of that.

__  
  


Connor isn’t quite sure how he ended up here, but at the same time, he knows exactly how he ended up here.

He woke up this morning, looking at Markus’ perfectly peaceful face, impervious to all of Connor’s movement of his nightmare, of his quiet cries, of his silent agony. It was the first time in the last week of them sharing a bed that he had one.

And it had to be  _ that  _ one.

Not quite the worst.

But a close second.

He had snuck away again, as he had every morning, and gone to work.

And now he’s pressed against the wall, his moans swallowed up by the tile and cheap paint, choked by Gavin’s hand around his neck, his hip stilled by the other.

He was wrong before. Markus hadn’t ruined him, not even a joking manner.

But Connor had ruined him. Entirely. He destroyed him. Everything he could have done to ruin Markus’ life he had, without a single trace of humor to it.

Even if Connor were to ignore all the other things he’s done, If he hadn’t been chasing that serial killer, Markus would still be alive. That is what it boils down to.

He hadn’t given into Gavin’s request because he wanted to sleep with him. He hadn’t given into Gavin’s shitty flirting because he  _ needed  _ sex. He could have gone the rest of his life without it.

But he wanted it.

And he needed something as different from Markus as possible.

Even when they were rough, it wasn’t like this. Markus wouldn’t wrap his hand around his throat like that, he wouldn’t press that hard against him, he wouldn’t hold onto his hip so hard that Connor got warning signs about damage.

His face wouldn’t be pressed so hard into the wall that if he needed to breathe, he wouldn’t be able to.

Markus wouldn’t treat him like a sex doll.

But Connor needed something as different from Markus as possible.

He couldn’t find someone that would slip into a mirror, that could make him fall apart with all that he missed. He needed someone to shove his face against the wall, to only care about themselves, to be biting down hard on his shoulder. He needed the clear distinction between whoever was behind him and Markus. Connor could not risk pretending that the other person was Markus.

Connor reaches for the hand on his waist, pulls it harshly away from his skin and around to his cock where it wraps around him, tugs too hard and too quickly but is a relief from the weighty need.

The teeth leave his skin long enough to say, “You androids are so needy.”

If he could speak, if his voice wasn’t being crushed by Gavin’s hand, he would tell him to shut up.

__  
  


_ Before; _

When he returns home from work, Connor is standing in front of the shelves, diligently separating piles of books into stacks around the room, on the counter, back onto the shelf again. He doesn’t look towards Markus when he enters, likely lost in thought.

He makes his way up behind him, arms wrapping around Connor’s waist. He feels Connor jump at his touch and then melt against him.

“What are you doing?” Markus asks, voice soft against Connor’s ear.

“Organizing the shelf.”

“Again?”

“You never let me finish,” Connor says.”You always distract me.”

He presses a kiss against the skin he can reach from this angle.

“See?”

“I don’t see anything.”

Connor turns his head, just enough that Markus can catch the mock annoyed look in his eyes.

“Our shelf is always a mess because of you,” he says, the annoyance filtering into his voice. “I try and do a rainbow and you somehow come home and stop me. I try and organize by genre and suddenly you’re done painting.”

“What are you doing now?”

“I have no idea,” he admits.

“So I can stop you?”

Connor pulls away from Markus’ arms.

“It needs to get finished at some point.”

“You don’t have work tomorrow,” Markus says, pushing him against the shelf, leaning forward with just enough space between them that Connor will have to do the work to close it. “You could do it then.”

“Hank is coming over tonight,” he says, moving just a hair forward. “He thinks we’re animals, you know. We never have an organization method. It’s killing him. Do you want to attend his funeral? Tell everyone that the cause of death was because you couldn’t keep your hands to yourself?”

Markus is very aware of where his hands are, on either side of the shelf behind Connor. He isn’t touching him. His entire body is kept away with a centimeter between them.

He can see how it makes Connor squirm, how it makes him _want_ to break that barrier. And he doesn’t say anything because he knows Connor wants him to. If there was a conversation going, Connor could keep at it, keep finding words to fill the gap instead of kisses.

But if he remains silent--

Connor leans forward, not even lasting the thirty seconds Markus had guessed, pulls him downwards hard.

They are likely too affectionate. They likely spend too much of their time falling against each other, kissing hard and letting their emotions rock back and forth from their fingertips.

But Markus can’t help but think of those four months they spent not being together at all, of dancing around each other and pretending their feelings were not so grand, that they could be reduced to just friendship. They need to fill that time. Every last second of it.

__  
  


_ After; _

Guilt is not something he is a stranger to, but when it floods so quickly into him, when there isn’t even any time between when Gavin pulls away and he hears the sound of pants being drawn upwards, of a belt being pulled taut--

It hits him harder than he his used to.

He stays leaned against the wall, forehead pressed against the cool tile like it will soothe it away. It takes a second for him to realize it is making it worse and he pulls away sharply, gets dressed quickly so that when Gavin swings the stall door open he isn’t left half naked for whoever to see.

Not that there is anyone. They timed their stupidity when the precinct was fairly empty.

He’d given Gavin one look and headed this way. It was all it took. There were barely any words passed between them. He hates giving Gavin the satisfaction of thinking he’s right. That he’s too sexually frustrated to last even a month.

But he underestimated how much he would regret actually giving into this.

Connor knew he would--he’s not that much of a fool. But he didn’t realize that it would knock him back like this. He feels like he’s betrayed Markus. Like he cheated on him even though he’s dead. But it’s the thought that his body is still wandering the streets of Detroit, still sleeping in the bed inside Connor’s apartment, even right beside him.

He reaches up, feels where his throat was held tightly at, can feel the skin still not quite wanting to return there again.

The only good thing to come of this is that he’s an android and won’t be bruised. There won’t be anyone to see what Gavin has done to him once the skin comes back.

They will be the only ones to know. And, maybe, whoever Gavin’s friend is that he made a bet with. But it would be easy to deny.

People are used to the vicious lies Gavin tells. They would believe Connor if he said nothing happened.

__  
  


_ Before; _

For their first New Years together they gather on the roof of the apartment building with most of the other inhabitants, clustered together like they are all friends or relatives at a reunion. Not quite the kind that would keep in touch, but the kind that would be able to stand next to each other and not make it so awkward they would have to run away.

They are strangers, but only partially. They live in the same building, so it is like they are one in the same. They weren’t invited here, it was simply the place they would go.

Markus made Connor come with him, said they had to do something other than watch the fireworks from their living room window. It had to be more special than that. He’d grabbed Connor’s hand, pulled him along behind him up the stairs, up into the frigid air of the rooftop.

Some of the human residents sit around a campfire, warming their wrapped up bodies next to the flames, others lighting marshmallows on fire and blowing them out quickly, leaving sticky residue on their fingertips as they struggle to eat them or mash them between crackers and chocolate..

The androids are easier to spot, even without their LEDs or uniforms. They sit on their own, heads tipped up to the sky, not bothered a single bit by the falling snow.

Markus picks a spot for them off to the side, but not entirely alone. Fireworks burst across the sky in dazzling lights as Markus adjusts Connor’s beanie for him, runs his fingers along the edge of the neckline of an old sweatshirt that is a shade of green that matches one of Markus’ eyes nearly perfectly.

Their hands lace together at their side and Markus’ free hand moving to Connor’s jaw, grazing the skin there for a long moment as the sky brightens above them and darkens again. He feels the press against his fingertips. A soft nudge that feels like fire in the cold air.

He lets his wall down slowly, lets whatever Connor is trying to tell him pass through.

It isn’t a memory. They don’t share them very often. It is simply the feeling in Connor’s chest. The warmth that mirrors his own. It is bursting, leaping, screaming.

They have told each other how much they love one another countless times, have sent the feeling back and forth through their fingers before. This isn’t any different, but it still hits him like the first time.

The utter inability to categorize it as anything but  _ love.  _ The inability to match it down to something he can measure or weigh. It is too much, it is all consuming.

It makes him realize how much the feeling in his own chest is screaming to get out.

He passes his back to Connor, watches as Connor smiles. Not a big smile, not all teeth and a small laugh ready to leave his lips, but not the tiny smiles he is used to seeing. It falls somewhere in that rare in between that is growing more and more seen as their life goes on.

Markus wants to tell him he loves him, but he  _ is.  _ The words are still escaping his lips, caught by the sound of a firework exploding above them and Connor leans forward, silences Markus in the middle of repeating them.

They haven’t even been together a year yet. Markus cannot imagine how he is going to handle this feeling for the rest of his life.

__  
  


_ After; _

When Connor returns home from work and sees Markus, his two green eyes staring back at him, he knows he has to leave. He just doesn’t know how. But he has to.

“I’m not staying,” the words come out of his mouth before he can stop them.

Markus looks up from his book, looking so much like  _ his  _ Markus in that moment that his chest tightens with pain so agonizing his legs stumble in their walk towards his room.

“I have… I have to go,” he fights to continue.

“Is it work?”

As if there could be anything else to take Connor away from this place.

It takes him too long to nod, because his mouth isn’t working. He can tell Markus doesn’t entirely believe him, but the issue isn’t pressed.

Connor disappears into his room, packs a bag of clothes and unpacks it again. He can’t take anything with him. Not if he wants to avoid this conversation. He can come back tomorrow, wait until he sees Markus leave for Jericho and then swoop in, grab as much as he can and leave again.

He doesn't know why he came in here. There is no false reason he could give to Markus if he was asked. His body slumps against the bed, fatigue rolling over his shoulders, threatening to pull him down to the sheets.

He wants to give in. He  _ should  _ give in. There is so much to be tortured for. All of his deaths are more deserving now than ever. Connor wishes they would pull him under but something in the back of his head is fighting against it.

He needs to get out of the apartment tonight. He cannot put it off any longer.

He pushes to his feet, hesitates for a small second before opening the door, and heads towards the door.

“When will you be back?” Markus asks from the couch. He hasn’t moved, has turned the pages in his book exactly one time in those minutes Connor spent alone.

His chest is filled with pain again. His lungs are breathing in agony. His heart is pumping out liquid grief.

“I don’t know. Late.”

Connor refuses to look at him. Finds a place over his shoulder or the perfect printed title on the cover of the book he holds.

“I’ll see you then.”

“Right,” Connor whispers, repeats again with a firmer tone. “Right.”

Connor is two steps down the street when he hears his name called, when he feels a hand on his shoulder, turning him around again. The sky flashes above them with a jolt of lightning, thunder rolls between the streets, rain patters down on them.

“I don’t know where you’re going,” Markus says, his voice barely audible over the heavy rain. “But I’m not stupid. I know you’re not coming back.”

“It’s just work,” he says, the lie coming a little easier this time, still trying to get Markus to believe it even though he has been caught. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”

“Don’t lie to me,” his voice is hoarse, rough and angry. “You don’t have to tell me, but don’t lie to me.”

He opens his mouth, starts to work out the words but he doesn’t know where they plan to go, what they plan to do, so they die unused on his tongue.

“Please,” Markus continues, taking a step closer to him. “Please, just stay. I don’t want you to leave.”

Connor’s hands are trembling, the shakiness of them barely dissuaded when Markus’ hands touch his.

“I can’t.”

He does not know where the ability to say the words come from, but they are said. Quiet but heavy with the weight of a hundred rocks.

They do little to make Markus step away from him. If anything, they have caused them to move closer. Their fingers with their quick touches part and Markus’ hands are on his face, touching either side of his neck lightly, moving upwards to cup his face, to drag him closer.

If it was his Markus, he would have closed that divide with a sloppy smile on his face and flushed cheeks.

But this is not his Markus.

So he stands completely still as their lips come closer and closer.

And then he yanks away, stumbles backwards.

“I can’t,” he says again. “I can’t.”

It seems to be the only words he is capable of now.

“Connor--”

But he is already turning, already running as hard as he can down the street.

He cannot do this. He cannot kiss Markus. Period. End of. Forget that he had spent the morning with his face crushed against the bathroom wall of the precinct. Forget all the horrible things he’s ever done that have ruined Markus’ life.

Forget it all.

Leave only the fact that the Markus behind him is not his.

And he cannot kiss any other Markus but his own.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing / Editing music;  
> sdla;sdkf wasn't really able to put a song on repeat like I normally do but I made a playlist [if anyone wants to listen!](https://open.spotify.com/user/296vro82ffu2tm06um7mrg9bo/playlist/462yR7DEOoIWZ6OO7vcVhk?si=LyEx4GjxSdu5nCcWDnWvdw)


	6. a pocket of possibility

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Hope is hugging me, holding me in its arms, wiping away my tears and telling me that today and tomorrow and two days from now I will be just fine and I'm so delirious I actually dare to believe it.” - Shatter Me / Tahereh Mafi

_Before;_

It is not his death that haunts him, not this time.

It is someone else's, felt as real as his own. As violent and vicious and terrifying as every single one he has suffered from.

He forced his way past the boy’s defenses, fell into all of the emotions and memories and then was ripped away.

Left standing there, trying to breath.

“I’m okay,” he whispers, over and over again.

He felt him die.

He felt Simon die.

And, at the time, he knew that it was different than his own deaths. Before he became a deviant, before he tore down that wall, before all of the pain and actual emotions of those moments came flooding back to him--

He knew it was different.

It is the first death he could classify as _feeling_ something.

 

“Connor.”

His eyes open, greeted by Markus’ face.

But in that moment, more than any others, it is a little harder to tell the difference between his dream and his reality. His hand moves up, slowly, but he isn’t even sure if it’s his own hand. It touches Markus’ jaw, rests gently there for a long moment.

“Why did you save me?” he asks, the words cracking as his thoughts start to sort themselves out again.

“Because you deserved to be saved.”

It is a strange way to put it. One that Connor will never be able to determine how Markus means it.

Did he deserve to be saved because he shouldn’t be just a machine, because there was a soul inside of him that needed to be let go, to live its life, to have emotions and thoughts and memories?

Did he deserve to be “saved” because he should have to feel the guilt and grief and pain of his actions?

“Connor?”

“Your friend,” Connor whispers. “The one you said you were first with--”

“That was a long time ago,” Markus replies. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

He can see how the lie stings him. How it makes his eyes cast downwards, his jaw tighten a little.

“He loved you,” Connor whispers, because now the floodgates have opened. He is crying and he cannot stop and he has to get these words out. “You loved him. That is not nothing, Markus.”

“It doesn’t matter _now_ ,” he says, squeezes his hand tightly against Connor’s side. “I love you now.”

“I’m not holding it against you.”

“Then--”

“I killed him, Markus.”

He watches Markus still, watches his face completely stop. He doesn’t pull away from Connor, but he can almost feel the need or space crackling between them.

“He was hiding on the rooftop,” Connor continues. He hopes Markus can understand his words with how broken they are, sliced neatly in half with tears streaming down his face. “I found him. I knew he was there. I could have turned away. I wish I turned away, Markus. I wish I had known who he was. I wish I had understood what deviants were beyond what I was programmed to believe.”

Markus’ hand on his side moves, but he can’t tell what it means. If it is supposed to be comforting, reassuring, loving. If it is supposed to be on it’s way to moving away, to abandoning him, to running out of the door and never returning.

“I tried to probe his memory to find you.”

“Stop,” Markus says suddenly.

“I knew how much pain it caused him to force that connection--”

“Connor, stop.”

“He killed himself so I wouldn’t know.”

“Stop.” It is louder this time, angrier. “Stop talking.”

But he can’t. There are still words bubbling up in his chest, thinking of all the terrible things he’s seen, all the terrible things he’s done. He didn’t see the location of Jericho at first. He saw fragments of Markus and Simon, not quite sure how the other felt but still falling against each other in brief kisses and dragging themselves away to other rooms.

These were the thoughts on Simon’s mind, then. Before Connor could push past the first wall and dive in for what he wanted to know, for the information he needed. Simon’s dying thoughts were of Markus.

He knows that Simon thought they were nothing more than a way to pass the time.

He knows that Simon was in love with him. He knows that Markus returned that feeling, even if Simon would never know now.

Because he knows what it is like to be looked at with such love and adoration by Markus. He knows that the touches that graced both of their hips and the kisses on their necks and the whispers in their ears were both things that Markus would not have done if he was using someone for just sex.

“You would have been happy together.”

It’s not like he can see the future--

But he knows that the two of them would have somehow found their way together. They would have never been broken apart.

Markus wanted Connor to tell him about all the things that keep him awake at night.

He has gotten his wish.

 

_Markus - After;_

Connor is gone and the apartment is an empty husk of what it once was.

He knows that it was quiet before. That Connor was barely there. But there is a shift in the atmosphere. There is no longer a growing and changing stack of books on the kitchen counter. There is no longer screams at night coming from his door. There is no longer someone holding a book out towards him, telling him which to read next.

He doesn’t know how this happened.

How Connor slipped through his fingers, how he was the one to leave, too distraught with Markus to stay.

He knows how this happened.

Trying to kiss him without even realizing it was the same as their first kiss, trying to make him stay when he should have just let Connor leave and come back when he was ready.

Markus knows Connor will never be ready.

The death of a loved one isn’t something he can _get over._ It is something he makes room for, understands, finds a way to live with.

He watched Connor _run_ away from him. Drenched in rain, boots splashing puddles in glittering upwards arcs. So much of Markus wanted to run after him that he took three steps forward before he forced himself to stay put until Connor was gone.

And then another hour before he could turn around, walk back up those stairs.

The second his foot stepped from the hallway to the entrance, he could feel the air shift from whatever it used to contain to now being completely devoid of anything but him.

 

He can’t spend his days at the apartment. It’s too depressing. Seeing the bookcase, half organized in twenty different methods or the hook where a jacket still hangs or the closed door to Connor’s room--

Markus hates how much he misses him, how aware he is of the traces of him despite how often Connor was gone before.

Two weeks without any word.

He doesn’t even know if Connor is okay. Markus assumes he is because he assumes Hank would be kind enough to tell him if something happened. Or someone at Jericho would let him know. Markus knows that Connor’s original tie to them had been only that he reported the actual crime statistics and it evolved from that.

He wishes he could remember how it evolved. When the first time he saw Connor’s face and something had shifted. Was it one specific moment? Was it a realization weeks into a friendship? Was it a gradual thing, and he simply became more and more aware as time went on?

Nobody will tell him. He isn’t even sure if he should ask.

 

Markus returns to Carl’s house. The Jericho home base. Markus’ office. He never knows what to call it. There isn’t a plaque outside the door that states anything other than the house number. The only inhabitants are a few passing androids looking for help or Noth and Josh.

“You’re back,” North says when he enters. “I wasn’t sure if you were going to come.”

He glances around the entryway, looks up at the high ceiling and the carpeted stairs. Even the old machine for Carl’s wheelchair stayed, but the paintings on the wall have been taken down and replaced. On one of the walls hangs a picture of the three of them in front of a large building.

“I’ve…” he trails off, somehow caught between two feelings. The Markus before him trusted North with his life. They likely talked about hundreds of things that were deeply personal between them.

But trust is not the matter here, is it?

And he isn’t the previous Markus, is he?

And they aren’t at war like they were before, are they?

“Do you have any time?” he asks. “To talk? In private?”

North glances towards the stairs beside her, then back towards the room behind them.

“Yeah, I suppose.”

She doesn’t lead him towards the stairs, for which he is endlessly grateful. He doesn’t know if it’s the fact he knows Carl’s room is upstairs and the Markus before him would never want to go up there any time soon, or if it is residual grief still clinging onto his insides.

They enter into the kitchen, North leaning against the counter, arms crossed but not in a defensive stance. Something tells him it’s just her. Constantly on the lookout.

Or, simply just a comfortable way to stand.

Humans put so much stock into their body’s behaviors. It isn’t that they aren’t right, it’s just that they are sometimes wrong.

Markus wanders away from her, not quite ready to speak yet. He opens one of the cupboards, peers inside. It’s packed from top to bottom with boxes labeled with a biocomponent’s tag number. He opens another, finds the same thing. Even the fridge is full of blue blood, the temperature set perfectly to help preserve the Thirium.

“Sometimes we use this room to operate on androids that desperately need help and can’t afford to go the hospital,” North supplies. “It was yours and Josh’s idea.”

He nods, knowing how much a simple cut on his finger cost, knowing how little money androids get paid for their work.

“Who does the replacements?”

“Josh has been reading manuals every night.”

“And you?”

“I took over your job.”

Markus turns back to her, leans against the other counter. Not quite opposite from her, not quite far away. Somewhere in between. A divide between them that he wouldn’t know how to cross, just that he knows he will have to shove his way through it like quicksand.

“Were you the one that wrote those files about this place, about my life at Jericho?” he asks.

_We miss you._

Markus holds onto those words like a security blanket.

Someone wants him, even if that someone isn’t Connor anymore.

“Can’t trust the police to know the actual story,” she says, shrugging. “Is that what you wanted to talk about?”

“No,” he says, then corrects himself with, “Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“I’ve… I think I’ve been having memories. Of things. I can remember walking to Jericho--the freighter--with Connor once. I can… remember things from my perspective when he showed me memories of us.”

Her face shifts, he can’t quite decipher what it means. Good? Bad? Neutral? None of the above, an unknown gray area?

“He showed you your past together?” she asks, and her tone tells him her change needs to be marked in the _bad_ column. “What is he trying to do? Get you to be exactly who you were before?”

“Wouldn’t you like it if he did?” he asks. “It isn’t like he was the only one affected by this.”

“That’s not even remotely the same, Markus. You were a leader to millions. You helped free us. Remembering that would be for the greater good, but becoming his sex doll so he doesn’t have to grieve? That’s entirely different.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Markus says, even though it does. “I don’t think he did it on purpose. He left anyways.”

“He left?”

He’s making things worse. He doesn’t know how to fix them. Markus is just telling her the truth and it’s making matters worse.

“Did you ever even like him before?”

Every inch of her body stills against the counter.

“I liked him,” she says, with little conviction. “I didn’t love the guy. I wasn’t thrilled you were dating him. He pulled a gun on you, Markus. More than once.”

_More than once._

“What are you talking about?”

She steps forward, arms falling to her side as she makes her way over to him.

“He hunted deviants. You led deviants. You think your paths crossed any other way than him trying to murder you?” she asks.

“He never told me.”

“Of course he didn’t.”

“Can you show me?”

She looks up at him, tilting her head slightly to the side.

“I wasn’t there the first time--”

“Then the second time. Show me.”

North reaches out towards him, skin sliding away quietly as their fingers connect.

 

It isn’t the same as it was with Connor, where he experienced the memory through Markus’ eyes.

Instead it switches back and forth.

Him standing, giving his speech.

And then through her eyes, switching from the crowd to Connor, his hand sliding from behind his back with a gun, fingers gripped tight around the metal. A long moment of him holding it, face blank, and then pocketed again.

It is so quick that North’s range of emotions hits him hard in the chest, too much for him to understand.

It doesn’t end as quickly as he knows North wants it too. She is jolting away from it but he’s seeing through her eyes Connor barely fighting back against the hands around his neck.

 

“You tried to kill him,” Markus says, stumbling backwards into the counter.

“I didn’t,” she says, her voice hard and angry. “I wanted him to explain.”

“And did he?”

“No,” North replies sharply, turning to leave the room. “Of course he didn’t. I just knew that whatever it was--it was a mistake. I trusted him. I guess that was a mistake. This isn’t even about me trying to kill him, Markus. It’s about him trying to kill _you_ and nearly succeeding.”

“You _hate_ him,” Markus whispers.

“Of course I hate him,” she says, fleeing to the other side of the room, the safety of the opposite side of the counter. “He tried to kill you two times. He _got_ you killed. If you weren’t dating him, if you weren’t living with him, you never would have died.”

“You can’t--”

“I can,” she spits. “I can blame him all I want. Maybe in some other life me and him would be best friends, but this one? Never. I will never forgive him for this, Markus. I don’t understand how you can. I never could.”

And she is out of the room, door closing behind her, gliding so calmly against its tracks in the wake of her exit it is strangely amusing.

 

_Connor - After;_

They’re exiting the station together, a car a few yards away beeping as it unlocks. Connor follows close beside him towards the vehicle, his eyes cast towards the sky. It’s raining, not very heavily, but enough that it feels _right._ There is something about the rain that always feels like something is right in the world. A collective sob being released, a cleansing of the palate.

He hates the summer, hates the winter. It never rains enough for him to feel like he could start fresh every morning. April is his favorite--they’re under a constant cloud of rain that never lets up, floods the streets and unleashes vibrant greens and black umbrellas.

“Hey, you coming or what?”

Connor wants to say _no,_ wants to appreciate the drizzle of rain a little while longer.

He feels a hand on his neck, pulling his face downwards a little bit. His hands come up, catch Gavin quick enough that their lips don’t touch.

“Don’t,” Connor says, his moment with the rain ruined now. “Don’t kiss me.”

Gavin smirks, pulls away but only barely. It bothers him in a way Connor can’t understand. They are nothing romantic. There is nothing between them but bite marks and bruises.

He even punched him in the stomach once. Killed him in the evidence room.

Connor doesn’t understand it.

“No signs of affection,” Gavin says. “Got it.”

“You’re not my boyfriend, so there is no reason for it,” Connor replies, walking the rest of the way towards the car.

“Just your fuck buddy.”

“I would be hard pressed to ever call you buddy, even in that context.”

“I’m hurt,” Gavin says, tilting his head to the side.

But Connor sees the traces of annoyances in his face, in his eyes, in his fake smile.

He is, indeed, hurt.

“Markus died less than two months ago,” Connor says, almost like he’s trying to ease away the pain he’s caused, even if the majority of him couldn’t care less whether or not he’s maimed _Gavin Reed’s_ feelings. “It doesn’t matter if his body is walking around again. It’s very different from a break-up.”

“I don’t need your explanations,” Gavin says. “Just get in the fucking car and let’s go.”

His brain racks for something sarcastic to say in response, to maybe lighten the mood again, but just as his brain starts to settle on something he feels _it._

A click. Like a key turning in its lock, like two magnets finally cutting the gap between them closed, like a glass connecting with the ground and shattering.

He looks, blindly, around the street for a second and finds him on the other side, hands stuffed in pockets, a hood pulled up to shield himself from the rain.

_Markus._

And just like when he first came out of the hospital, Connor wants to run towards him like it will be _his_ Markus there, ready to wrap around him and tell him that everything is alright. He has to fight the feeling with every ounce of his free will and climb into the car beside Gavin.

 

_Markus - After;_

Josh was the one that suggested going to the station to find out where Connor was staying, to essentially stalk him from his work to where he was staying at. North refused to have any input on the conversation, kept disappearing out the door. It feels like one of them should apologize, but he can’t quite figure out what _either_ of them should apologize for.

Telling the truth? So bluntly?

Markus is almost happy that she did. There were things she said that she had never told the previous Markus. He knows that. He knows something would click inside of him if he knew Connor almost killed him on that stage.

Markus has gotten them lost in a state of unease that he needs to fix, but he doesn’t have the tools to do so.

And now he’s standing in the rain, watching another guy pull Connor down for a kiss. It’s over so quickly he can’t tell if they actually did or not, but it doesn’t matter.

Because if it _didn’t_ happen, it _almost_ did. That carries as much meaning as if they did.

Connor is moving on. He’s finding someone else to be with. Another cop, even. He will likely be better suited than Markus ever was. They even share a job--whatever arguments that they’ve had in the past about not relating to one another or not having enough time--it’s gone now. They would understand each other, share the same schedule, spend more time together.

Markus freezes in place when Connor looks up at him. He wants to run away, to duck his head, pretend he isn’t here, but his feet are stuck in place. He can’t move.

And then they are gone.

 

_Connor - After;_

Gavin’s place is a completely trashed mess.

The first night he stayed here, the night he ran away from Markus in the streets, he had laid on Gavin’s couch the entire night, staring up at the ceiling and wondering if he made the right decision.

About anything.

Going back as far as to go down those stairs and find out where Jericho is. To rushing forward to grab Simon’s wrist. To getting off that elevator and stopping Daniel.

He keeps unwinding further and further until there is nothing left of him.

How is it that they’ve ended up like this--

Markus, completely wiped of all traces of his life--

Connor, haunted by everything he’s ever done?

And in Gavin’s shitty apartment.

It’s the fifth night he’s been here, just as surprised as the first night that Gavin let him stay. He expected every time that he would get kicked to the curb. It isn’t like he doesn’t have a place to go. He’s stayed at Hank’s house in the meantime, between the night when the pain got to be too much and he slipped out an excuse and headed over here.

Connor sleeps on the couch there, too, just like the first night he became a deviant.

He’s quick as he moves through the apartment tonight, stepping over piles of trash and tossing them into the garbage, folding up laundry and shoving it into the hamper at the end of Gavin’s bed. Each task he completes he cares less and less if he wakes up Gavin.

There’s dents in his hips and his shoulder where Gavin has pressed too hard into him. It’s good enough revenge for him, especially since he’s cleaning this terrible apartment up.

Connor wonders what explanation he will give someone in the future when they find the markus, though. If he will ever be back with Markus and have to tell him that he let Gavin destroy him little by little.

“The fuck are you doing?” Gavin asks.

Connor looks up from the sink, dishes floating in the soapy water.

“Cleaning.”

“Why?”

“Your place is disgusting. It really reflects your personality.”

Gavin scoffs, walks from the bedroom door to the kitchen, fingers hooking through the belt loop of Connor’s jeans and tugging him away from the sink. Connor resists, stays firmly planted in place as he picks up a bowl to scrub at.

“What does that make yours?” he asks, tilting his head to the side. “Your place clean?”

“It’s disorganized but cleanly so,” Connor mutters, hates that his own home reflects his personality. His thoughts are constantly lost in fifty piles, never to be sorted properly. He always reaches something he doesn’t want to deal with and tosses it away again.

“Come here,” Gavin says, tugging on the loop again.

The movement makes Connor suddenly aware that the pants he’s wearing aren’t his. They aren’t even stolen from Markus like the majority of his closet. They’re Gavin’s.

And he’s pulled so easily, hands leaving the sink wet with suds sitting on the back of his hands, bowl left floating at the top of the water, half clean.

Gavin turns him, presses Connor close against him.

He knows how much Gavin wants to kiss him. He can see it in his eyes. Gavin is being good at following what Connor wanted, of not kissing him. They can’t kiss. It would change everything.

But part of him wants to close that gap, find out what _exactly_ would change.

He reaches up, rests his hand against Gavin’s cheek like he has done every time Gavin has fallen asleep beside him, becomes acutely aware of the human-ness of him. The flesh and blood and bone all working so hard to keep him alive.

It is different from thinking about himself or Markus. Their biocomponents and limbs can be easily replaced, traded out or upgraded. They are constantly improving. They will live forever if their pieces are being made and readily available.

But humans--

They are so fragile.

If he moved his hand to Gavin’s neck, used the same pressure that Gavin uses on his own when he fucks him, Connor would leave him dead against this counter.

And if he died, he would never come back.

Not even his body to haunt him. Not like Markus.

Gavin pulls away from him, his face shifting from whatever lied there before to an expertly crafted annoyed expression.

“You’re going to get suds on me.”

“Sorry for the inconvenience,” he says, turns his hand so he can leave the trail bubbles across his cheek anyways before he pulls away, heart thudding in his chest.

Too close.

Always too close.

 

_Markus - After;_

Three weeks.

That is how long it takes before North finally talks to him again without heavy traces of _something_ underlying their words. It isn’t perfect--likely not even close to what their friendship before was--but they actually make jokes and laugh at them together.

Markus spends most of his days at the house. He is tasked with things an assistant or an intern would do. Things not deemed _important_ enough for humans to do on their own anymore. He sits in on the meetings that Josh and North go to and sometimes things spark inside his head.

A flash of sitting in the third chair between them. A sliver of his hand writing something down in his perfect handwriting.

And once--

Him and Connor leaned up against a bookshelf kissing, caught by North wearing the same exasperated expression she wore when someone offered her a deal that was too stupid for even a child to consider.

In Markus’ free time, or rather _North’s and Josh’s_ free time, he is passed memories through their palms. Things that he was present for and nothing else.

His past is unveiled to him by their memories, their versions drifting away like falling snow and replaced with a blizzard of his own thoughts, his own emotions, _his_ memory.

He knows why he was so apprehensive of Jericho at first, he feels the same sting of regret at asking about North’s function, he _remembers_ crashing through that CyberLife store with the stolen van.

It is a strange concoction inside of his head.

Bits of him in the past mixing with the him in the present.

He can feel how each memory shifts his tongue to different words. He can feel how his chest rattles with the emptiness of no longer being Jericho’s leader.

But more so, Markus can still feel the violent sting of being two different people at once.

He trusts that these are his memories, that each piece is like a part of a puzzle sliding into place. But he still has lost so much. He is only getting a thousand fragments to fill it in and it is a billion pieces.

 

_Connor - After;_

It’s the first time he actually allows himself to fall asleep.

And he is awoken by Gavin shaking his shoulders, shouting his name.

He doesn’t even remember what dream it is when his eyes open. He just knows the pain. He is frozen in place, like he always is, trying to breathe even though he doesn’t need it. It’s the calming motion of it. When he can’t get his hands on a coin to toss and twirl or a tie to straighten and tighten, he needs to focus on his breath.

In.

Out.

He can’t do that now. He can’t drag in oxygen, can’t expel it once more.

“Focus on me, alright?” Gavin says, hands cupping his face. “Just focus on me. You’re alright. You’re fine. It was… a dream? Wasn’t it? A nightmare? Forget it. Don’t… don’t think about what it was. Just focus on me.”

So he does.

A long, agonizing, ten minutes of focusing on Gavin’s face. Just as frozen in fear as Connor’s body is frozen in pain. The almost _softness_ in Gavin’s eyes. The hard edge to him evaporated with the terror of this seemingly perfect android actually _affected_ by something.

“I’m fine,” Connor finally chokes out when he can get his mouth to work. “I’m fine.”

“Bullshit you’re fine, what the fuck has been going on with you?” he says. “You have nightmares? About what?”

“I’ve died quite a few times,” Connor says, trying to keep his voice calm, rational, but there is a jagged piece of grief stuck in his throat cutting at every word.

“Markus never send you to a therapist?”

“Markus never knew how bad it was,” Connor says, testing his control over his hands to remove Gavin’s from his face. It’s too close to the line. Not vulgar or brutish enough for Connor to pretend they aren’t Markus’. “And therapists for androids tend to want to just wipe away the bad parts.”

“And what’s so bad about that? Just delete it and you’ll be happy again.”

“They make up who I am.”

Gavin scoffs, leans away from Connor’s body. He is thankful for the distance between them, even if he wants to reach out and close it again.

“I’m sorry for scaring you,” Connor says, sitting up. “It was really nothing.”

“Nothing?” he asks. “You kicked me so hard I have internal bleeding.”

“I highly doubt that.”

“Whatever,” Gavin says, and he leans his cheek against Connor’s shoulder. “Don’t do that. I thought you died. I thought I was gonna have to call CyberLife and explain why you’re in my bed. _Fuck_ , I thought I was going to have to explain to Hank.”

“I think he could come to his own conclusions,” Connor says quietly. “But, on the bright side, you probably wouldn’t have to worry about whatever damages CyberLife fines you for if Hank found out.”

“Because I’d be dead?”

“Most certainly.”

Connor glances over to him, catches the only ever real smile he’s ever seen on Gavin’s face, a tiny laugh escaping his lips.

It’s been almost two months since he left his apartment for Markus to stay in. It’s been almost three since Markus died.

Is it too soon for him to want to kiss another person?

He can feel guilt weighing heavily on his chest when he leans down, lifts Gavin’s face to his own.

When their lips touch, Connor can see what their life would be like together.

Connor, rounding out Gavin’s sharp edges. Filing them down to something manageable, likeable, _good._

But Gavin, sharpening his own to the point where they would cut people accidentally, leave them bleeding on the ground.

Maybe it would make some of the guilt go away. Maybe it would make it subside into something he could deal with again.

But one day Gavin is going to die and Connor will be in the same place again. Whatever brief time they have together, even if it would be worth it, would just be another person he loves dead on his conscious, weighing his soul down to the bottom of a never ending ocean.

So Connor pulls away before he can let this go any further, before he can even allow his present self to think about slipping down the rabbit hole of being in love again.

He needs too much time. He needs a thousand years.

Three months certainly isn’t enough.

“Connor?” Gavin says, and his voice is quieter than Connor has ever heard it. Softer, too.

Connor hates it. Hates how much it doesn’t sound like the angry voice in his ear, telling him what a needy pathetic android he is, how close it is to the soft sound of Markus’ voice in the middle of the night.

“I’m sorry,” he says quickly. “I should get going. I don’t want Hank to worry. I think he’s getting tired of my excuses anyways.”

“Connor, I--”

But he is already standing, already grabbing the first articles of clothing his hands can find and pulling them on. Fuck it if they’re his or if they’re Gavin’s. He needs to leave. He can’t sort out his thoughts right now. They are swimming in oceans of too many emotions for his processors to keep up with.

When he reaches the front door, Gavin is behind him, grabbing at his shirt as he tries to make it down the hallway. He is yanked to a stop and he turns around, hoping the tears in his eyes, the sadness in his heart, isn’t showing up as obvious to Gavin as they would another android.

They don’t say anything when Gavin pulls him back down again, another kiss that is deep and long and makes Connor’s heart thunder with _want_ and _need._

 _Want_ for this.

 _Need_ to get away.

His hands come up, rest on either side of Gavin’s face, can’t decide if he should push or pull. There are hands knotted in the collar of his shirt, pulling him down. In the end, it isn’t Connor that breaks the kiss--it’s Gavin. Just far enough away that when he speaks, his lips still move against Connor’s.

“I know you aren’t coming back here,” Gavin says, his voice quiet.”But I’ve been dreaming about that since the first second I saw you.”

Connor wishes, not for the first time, that things were different.

That maybe in another life, Simon is alive and with Markus and they are happy. That Markus never died, that they live in an apartment together with smiles and kisses passed between them and the ability to finally admit their love to one another.

That he could stay with Gavin and actually love him, that his heart didn’t already belong in someone else’s hands. That maybe he could deal with Gavin’s death, sometime in the far off future. That there wasn’t already someone else’s murder pressing down on him.

Connor wants to say he’s sorry again. Sorry that he messed everything up from the second he was assigned to work at the DPD with Hank. Sorry that he died so many times, that he killed so many androids, that he couldn’t be who he is now sooner.

But he doesn’t say anything, he just pulls away from Gavin’s grip and walks away with as much effort as he can to hold back his emotions until he’s alone on the elevator.

 

_Markus - After;_

He wants to see him.

He _needs_ to see him.

Or, maybe even more accurately:

He _needs_ him.

End of.

It has been too long, an agonizingly slow three months without Connor.

Granted, of course, Josh and North have made things better. His life has vastly improved with them in it. Markus knows why they were his friends before--not because they were forced together, not because they were placed in the leadership positions of Jericho, but because they _work_ together. They click. They have a connection.

And he has the same thing with Connor.

And he is not going to let him go.

Not again.

Josh gives him the old address that used to be in Connor’s file, a little house owned by Hank Anderson. Markus had been avoiding going there after seeing Connor with that other guy on the street but now--

All he wants is to see him again.

Markus has seen enough pieces from Josh and North to know that there was something _real_ there. He has seen enough times where they have been caught with jokes and laughs and fake apologies or the others have discreetly stepped away, pretending to never see anything at all.

He has felt their relationship evolve from the stages of hiding behind closed doors to being spotted on the street holding hands. He has seen them grow through the eyes of others.

Even in the last month North’s face has started to shift from annoyance when Connor’s name comes up to just a faint frown. Maybe one day it will pull up into a tiny smile. Maybe one day she and Connor _can_ be friends.

He has painted twenty pictures of Connor now. They all start off being something else and end up with the lines of his cheeks, the curved angle of an eye, the arch of an eyebrow.

That stupid lock of hair that flops downwards that he always wants to push back and replace with a kiss.

 

Hank’s house is quiet when he approaches it. The lights in the living room are off, but the windows light up with the flicker and shift of a television screen as it switches from varying camera angles or from commercial to commercial, channel to channel.

And it’s raining again. Markus is soaked through because he made the mistake of walking to try and collect his thoughts, to try and figure out what he wants to say. It’s failed miserably, since his thoughts are just as uncollected as they were when he woke up this morning and spent five hours trying to talk himself in or out of coming here.

He starts up the steps to knock on the door when he’s stopped by a faint voice calling his name, a question piercing the darkening, angry sky above them.

Markus turns slowly, looking out at Connor making his way upwards towards the house. His jacket is pulled tight around him, looking almost a size too big. A beanie pulled down low, covering where his LED would be. He looks like he’s in disguise.

He looks _familiar_ like this.

“I came to talk,” Markus says, stepping down from the porch and back into the rain. “Is that alright?”

Connor seems to consider this, his gaze shifting from Markus to the house.

“Hank is likely asleep,” he says. “Can we talk out here?”

Markus nods, shortens the space between them to only a couple of yards. He supposes the light of the television could be on whether or not Hank is awake. Maybe Connor is just trying to save them from having this conversation inside where Hank could hear, get involved in.

It doesn’t matter, not to Markus.

“I wanted--I wanted to tell you…” he trails off, feeling so stupid starting this way, but he pushes onwards. “I want you to come home, Connor. I can’t--I can’t stay there by myself.”

“I’ve been paying the rent,” Connor says. “It’s--”

“It’s not the _rent,_ ” Markus says. “I want _you._ I want you to come back.”

Connor looks away again, at the one square of cement between them, three cracks running through it with grass and weeds fighting their way towards the sky.

“I’m sorry,” he tries again. “About everything. I know I’m not the one you wanted to come back. I know you loved him. I know how much he loved you. I know how much he needed you. I know how much _I_ need you now.”

Connor looks back up at him and he swears that he’s crying, that his tears are being carefully hidden by the rain. His face is twisted in torment, though, and Markus has seen him cry enough to know what his face looks like when he does.

A hundred times he’s seen him cry, even if it wasn’t through _these_ eyes.

“I can’t,” he says, just like he did last time. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

Markus steps forward, reaches out to him, is thrown back violently to another time he reached out to him, of Connor’s face pulled into excruciating pain, of a beanie pulled down and hiding a blinking LED, of a coat covering his android uniform.

 _Be careful,_ Markus had told him.

“I-I don’t want to go home without you,” Markus says, a trembling hand moving from his shoulder to his cheek, the other one following, his feet moving closer. Connor isn’t fighting him, but he refuses to make eye contact with him.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and Markus sees his mouth move five times, each time quieter, more and more drowned out by the sound of the rain and the thunder.

 _“Please,”_ Markus says, and it is equally lost amongst the patter of rain droplets, equally repeated, growing louder and louder instead.

Connor reaches up, presses his hands over Markus’, pulls them gently from his face.

“You don’t need me,” he says. “And I don’t love you. I loved him. I can’t come back. I can’t--I can’t see you anymore. Ever. I-I’m barely--”

His words are cut off with a whimper.

And Markus is so hopelessly in love with him.

The previous Markus.

This Markus.

Whatever Markus that comes after.

He is always going to be hopelessly in love with this boy.

And all he wants to do is wash away his pain, let him know that things can be better, that they can get better, that he can help, that he needs Connor’s help in return.

“I love you,” he whispers.

Connor looks up at him, teeth caught on his bottom lip hard. Hard enough to spill a tiny drop of blue blood down his chin.

Markus pulls his hand away from Connor’s grip, drags his thumb across it, smears it against his skin where it is washed away by the rain quickly.

“I love you,” Markus repeats.

“I--” Connor stops, breaths in a long, shaking breath and says slowly, “I don’t love you. I loved him.”

Connor pulls away from him, quickly, making his way up towards the house.

Markus turns, catches his wrist and pulls him to a stop.

“Are you talking about the Markus before me?” Markus asks, regretting his words as he says them, but continues on anyways. Some sick twisted need to inflict the same hurt that is slicing open his heart right now back at the one that caused it. “Or are you talking about that guy you were with before? The detective?”

Connor pauses, looks back to him.

“I’m not--I was never with him,” he says, voice angry. “I couldn’t--I could never--”

Why can’t either of them seem to get a sentence out that doesn’t destroy one another?

Markus lets go of Connor’s wrist but he still doesn’t move. They stand there in silence for so long that they must look like statues to anyone else.

He knows he should tell Connor about his memories, about how he has been getting pieces of himself back, of how he has been rebuilding his life again, how he _needs_ Connor because he loves him and because he wants more of those pieces, of the ones that he has been holding out for because he knows they will start to click him back into place.

But he can’t get the words out.

And Connor is finally walking away, crossing the divide of the rain soaked sidewalk to the dry slab by the front door. He watches in silence as the key slides into the lock, as the door pushes open, as Connor doesn’t give him another glance before it closes again.

And he is alone.

Just like he was before this.

But this time he has been cut by Connor’s words and has bleed his emotions and his tears onto this front lawn.

_I don’t love you._

 

_Before;_

It is not the same since Connor told him.

During the day, he can see the small glances that Markus casts towards him. A tiny, almost imperceptible, flicker of _something._

He cannot name what this is. It is a pressure put on the back of his head that screams with the want to know what it means. If it is bad or good or neutral. If there is somehow a fourth option. If it is all three.

And at night, when he wakes up, Markus doesn’t say anything at all. He pulls him close to his chest, hands making lazy circles around his arm or trailing up and down his spine.

On the fifth night of this, Connor can feel his mouth moving of its own accord.

“Do you wish it was me instead of him?”

_Dead on the rooftop, gun to his own head._

“No,” Markus whispers. “I wish he was alive, I don’t wish you were dead.”

“What if you were soulmates?”

“What if we are?”

Connor looks up towards him, pulls away enough that they can make eye contact. He wants to see whatever Markus is feeling, wants to dissect it to understand how truthful he is being.

“If he was alive, we would have never been together.”

Markus falls silent, his eyes close for a second. It is a barrier put between them that Connor doesn’t know how to break.

“You were meant to be with him.”

“What does it matter who I was meant to be with?” Markus says, opening his eyes. “I make my decisions. I am with who I want to be with. We don’t have to be soulmates. We don’t have to be created from the same stardust. We are who we are. We love each other. We are happy together. We could be happy for the rest of our lives, Connor. Simon is dead. I wish he was alive. I’m happy you are alive. This is the life we are leading. We can’t make changes now.”

Connor leans forward, rests his head against Markus’ shoulder. He can feel tears start to prick at his eyes, forces them back as hard as he can because he is so _tired_ of crying.

“I don’t want to forget Simon. I don’t want to pretend that I didn’t love him. But he’s in the past now. You are my present and my future, Connor. I’ve told you that before. I will tell you that every day if you need me to. You were a machine, executing a program, accomplishing your task. I can’t hold that against you.”

“I could have made a thousand other choices and still been within the program’s parameters.”

Markus falls silent, pulls away just enough to press a kiss against his forehead.

“I don’t know how to help chase the guilt away, Connor. I’m sorry it turned out this way.”

Connor curls up against his side, tries to make the guilt web away again but it only comes crashing down heavier, harder, enough to knock the wind out of him. His eyes close, press tight together to try and combat it as best as he can, but it always seems that the harder he tries the worse he feels.

“Would you feel guilty if you thought I hated Simon?”

The question comes so suddenly that his eyes flicker open again. He can almost feel the regret of Markus asking the question radiating off of him.

“You--” Markus pauses. “You don’t have to--I’m sorry.”

“I would,” Connor replies. Because he has to answer. If he doesn’t, he knows what conclusions Markus will come to.

And he needs to make sure the truth is out there.

“I would,” he repeats. “It isn’t… so much the _you_ factor, Markus. It doesn’t make it any easier, it certainly makes it complex on a different level, more _difficult,_  but it isn’t--”

He stops speaking, finds Markus’ hand on his back with his own, presses their fingers together lightly.

He has never shared a memory of one of his deaths with Markus, has never shared one of the murders he committed or the suicides he’s caused. It is too much pain.

But he can send the feeling, the thoughts.

Of the two Tracis, running away.

Of the gun going off.

Of the same level of guilt hardening in his belly like a living thing, like a new organ that has its own function now. It keeps him alive just as much as the Thirium pump in his chest or the metal bits in his skull.

Connor pulls away quickly, makes sure that feeling doesn’t reside between them long enough for it to have any lasting effect on Markus that way it has on him.

The two are quiet for a long moment, only sitting in the dark as rain patters against the window on the opposite side of the room. A flash of car lights travel their way across the wall beside them, illuminating the room for a brief few seconds.

Connor is afraid to look up at Markus when he knows he will be able to make out his face in perfect detail, so instead he keeps his gaze on his torso, memorizes the scars and damage on his skin for the hundredth time.

“I’m sorry,” Markus says finally, breaking their silence. “I’m sorry.”

And Connor doesn’t know what to say.

Because it isn’t _alright._ It isn’t _okay._

It simply is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing / Editing Music;  
> Here With Me - Susie Suh x Robot Koch  
> The Last Stand - Koda


	7. the greed of men

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "What is infinite? The universe and the greed of men." -- Shadow and Bone / Leigh Bardugo

_ Before?; _

There is blood on his hands.

Blue and red streaks.

His fingers ache so badly he knows if he was human there would be bruises blossoming across his knuckles. He looks up towards Gavin, feeling the trickle of blood run down his nose.

This isn’t going to stop his mission. He will come back. Chunks of memory lost in the space in between, but he will be back.

It’s the only reason he doesn’t fight the bullet entering his head.

 

He wakes violently, eyes snapping open and staring at a cracked ceiling above him, a ragged breath drawn through his lungs.

Connor misses the days when he woke up in peace, opening his eyes to the sterile white CyberLife room, a coin pressed in his palm, clothes hanging neatly on hangers and waiting for him. The -51 changing over to -52 or -53 or so on.

He presses his palm against his chest where it would be.

A -56 sitting silently, mockingly. Not printed there on the fabric, but embedded on the plastic somewhere.

His hands itch for a quarter to mess with, itch to straighten a tie, to press the creases of his coat out. The thoughts are filled with instant regret, telling him that he yearns for the time when he was a machine and didn’t feel anything.

So his eyes fall closed again, he draws in each trembling breath over and over again until they become steady. It is the only repetitive motion he can think of to focus on.

And then he stands, jumps when he spots Hank standing in the hallway staring at him.

“Were you watching me?”

Hank brings his shoulders up in a shrug, “You woke me up.”

Connor glances over to the couch, blanket left askew. Half on the ground, half on the couch. His pillow lies tossed on the floor a yard away. Like that is what should remind him he could have been screaming or thrashing in his sleep, not the lingering pain sitting at the base of his neck.

“I’m sorry--”

“Don’t apologize,” he says. “It was a nightmare, right? You still have those?”

Connor wraps his arms around himself, holds tightly like they are the only things keeping him together. He lets go--he will fall into a hundred pieces on this ground. CyberLife won’t even be able to put him back together again.

“They started to go away,” he says, choosing his words carefully. “Then they came back.”

It is the vaguest way he can put it.

_ Markus  _ helped him.

_ Markus  _ died.

He hates the way those words taste on his tongue so he shoves them aside, chooses differently while still getting his point across.

“Come here,” Hank says, motioning towards the kitchen.

Connor follows him, sits down in a chair without even being asked. He listens to the sound of porcelain hitting porcelain, of mugs being set down, of the groan of the microwave as it rotates.

He is back where he was two years ago, keeping his eyes focused on the imperfections of the dining room table, a spoon hitting the sides of a cup and then it being set down in front of him.

“You don’t have to drink it,” Hank says, just like he did before. “But it might help.”

“It does,” he mumbles, and he takes the mug in his hands, holds it tightly, lets the heat pour from it into his palms. He wishes he could drink it, that it wouldn’t just sit somewhere inside him and spoil.

Before Markus moved in with him, during those few months he lived alone, this was what he did every night he woke up.

The warmth of the mug helps dissipate some of the pain still lingering in him. He read once that it helped humans, too. Maybe the routine of it helps him more than it helps them, maybe just the actions, something to focus on, a task to complete, translates from android to human more than Connor had considered before.

And Hank could have just as easily given him a cup of hot water. There was no need to turn it into hot chocolate, to drop little marshmallows along the top where they float along the surface.

“He came over last night,” Connor’s voice is deathly quiet. “He wanted me to go back. I told him I couldn’t. Is that a mistake?”

He keeps his eyes on the top of his drink, watches the steam rise up and slowly disappear in the air. Looking at Hank’s face right now feels dangerous, like it will tell him he was stupid for leaving in the first place, stupider for not going back.

Or maybe he’s just scared that he’s going to be told that he made a good decision for once.

Wouldn’t that hurt worse?

“Was it the truth?” Hank asks. “That you couldn’t?”

All he wants is to be back in Markus’ arms. All he wants is to kiss him again, to pass memories and thoughts and  _ love  _ back and forth once more.

But it wasn’t his Markus. He can’t use him like that. He can’t turn him into a replacement.

“Yes,” he decides on.

“You androids,” Hank says, matching just how quiet Connor is. This is a conversation meant to be spoken in soft tones in the middle of the night with a mug of hot chocolate in his hands. This is not something he could talk to Hank about on the way to work or sitting outside with a burger on the table between them. “You’ve been given these emotions out of absolutely nowhere. You don’t have the… experience we do. You feel everything so deeply because you haven’t had your senses numbed yet. You haven’t had the twenty or thirty or fifty years to understand how to cope with it.”

Connor looks up at him, a tiny glance snuck between the gap in Hank’s words.

“Have you?” he asks. “Figured out how to deal with emotions?”

Hank catches his eyes, holds them for a long time. “Fuck no. I don’t think anyone really has. But humans are a little better at it than you are.”

He smiles lightly, looks back down at the bloated marshmallows, “In thirty years, if I figure it out, I’ll let you in on the secret.”

“Thanks,” Hank says, a small smile caught on his face. “And if I figure it out first, I’ll tell you.”

  
  


_ After; _

The painting he’s in the middle of is Connor. Markus knew that it would end up this way the second he picked up his brush and he hadn’t tried to fight it like he normally does. It is only a half finished smudged, Connor’s hand is raised in front of his face, blocking his features, his head turned slightly to the side. The corner of his mouth and the arch of his eyebrows are going to be visible when he’s done, but for now the space is left blank.

Markus just hasn’t figured out if it should be left slightly open, a slight blush spreading where his skin is visible, or if he should reflect the anguish that rests on his features every day.

He hasn’t gone back to see Connor. It’s been three days since he was left in front of Hank’s house, desperately trying to piece himself back together so he could go home. His feet constantly turn him in the direction of the house, though, constantly want to try again.

He was so stupid. So foolish. He had told himself, had made himself believe that he  _ wouldn’t  _ give up. He wouldn’t let Connor go again.

And he had.

His hand stills, the line he painted a bit too thick, jagged and angled too far downwards. Markus could fix it if he acts quick enough, but instead he lets it dry, lets it settle down into the canvas, lets the damage be done.

  
  


_ Before; _

They go camping.

The last three weeks have been passed comments about how both of them need to take a break from their work, both of them arguing that their work is important, that they can’t just stop and take a rest. Hank had said they were amusing, watching them both fight for the same thing while refusing their own need for it, too.

Connor isn’t quite sure how they happen to make the conclusion that they should go  _ camping  _ of all things, but he’s here anyways, standing at the edge of the lake and watching Markus tip toe around the shallow end. Neither of them can go much further, they can’t swim like humans can. Their bodies are too easily able to flood.

It is one of the rare moments Connor wishes he was human, because floating out in the distance with Markus, of diving under the water and the sound disappearing around him--

It sounds perfect. Perfect enough that he wants to make a mental note and go to Kamski, tell him to rip apart his insides and fix him up like the Chloe’s in the pool. He has swam before, dived off Jericho with Markus and the others--but they weren’t in the water long enough for it to become a problem.

They’re just prototypes. They never needed this function.

“You’re supposed to be clearing your mind,” Markus calls from the water. “Not overthinking everything.”

His lips twitch up into a smile and Connor takes a slow step forward, feels the cold water wrap around his ankles as he makes his way toward Markus, as far out from the shore as they can go.

When he reaches Markus, his hand wraps around Connor’s waist and pulls him tight against his side, his other hand pointing out towards the setting sun.

“You know the feeling you get when you finally stop and appreciate things like this?” he asks. “That days go on, that you can always start again, that there is beauty all around us? When you finally get a moment of peace?”

Connor nods, even though he doesn’t entirely know what Markus means. Peace is not something that comes easily to him, certainly not from watching a sunset. It comes from quiet moments in the house, just before he drifts off to sleep and knows the nightmares won’t get him. From sitting on a couch, legs draped over Markus lap and a book in his hand. From visiting Hank, walking Sumo, to solving a case and knowing he’s done something good to make up for all the bad.

“That’s how I feel when I’m with you.”

The hand on his waist pulls at him, turns him so that their lips can touch. Connor can’t get over how cheesy it all sounds, can’t get over how much it makes his insides melt, too.

Someday he is going to marry this man. If marriage means anything to androids at all--it doesn’t matter, he just wants to call Markus his husband.

  
  


_ After; _

He thought he imagined the sound at first, but it is impossible to pretend that he could have imagined the clatter that followed shortly after.

The sound of the lock clicking, of the door pushing open? He still hears these ghostly noises every so often, has peered out his bedroom door only to be greeted with an empty room.

But this time when Markus opens the door, paint transferring from his hand to the silver knob, Connor is standing out in the living room, picking up a scattered pile of books that lay on the ground.

“You’re back,” Markus says, his chest filling with hope. It is his oxygen, his blood, the bones keeping him standing.

Connor jumps at the sound of his voice, yanks his hand away from the book he’s reaching towards like it’s where the words have been spoken from.

“I’m n-not back,” he says, resuming his motion slowly. “I just came to get a few things. I thought you left.”

Markus deflates, slumps against the wall, whispers out a barely audible, “Oh.”

“I’m sorry,” Connor says, picking up the last book and adding it to his stack as he stands. “I’ll come back later. I didn’t want… I didn’t want this to be awkward.”

_ Too late. _

He watches as Connor sets the stack on the edge of the counter, steps towards the door empty handed.Markus’ feet move on his own, grab his wrist and pull him to a stop before Connor can reach the door knob.

“Don’t,” he says. “Don’t go.”

He needs to plead with him, to ask him to stay one last time.

“Markus--”

If Connor says no this time, he will let him go. No more chasing after the boy he loves, no matter how much he wants to fight for him.

“I need you to know,” Markus says, his hands moving to Connor’s face like he did last time. “I need you to know that I’m remembering things. That counts for something, doesn’t it?”

If it doesn’t, he will fall apart.

Connor doesn’t reply to him. They stay completely silent for a long time before Markus lets the skin fall back from his fingers, press little pieces of memory into the tips. Connor’s hands come up, rest over where Markus’ hands are against his face. He doesn’t pull them away like last time, he just keeps contact there.

“Let me show you,” Markus whispers. “Let me prove it to you.”

“You can’t do this,” Connor’s voice matches his, equally quiet, equally scared.

“Let me show you,” he repeats.

And Connor lets his walls down, his eyes close, lets his own skin slip away, lets the memories pass between them.

Everything through his eyes, everything with his thoughts attached, his apprehensiveness, his excitement, his anger, his joy.

It is ripped away from him in a second, Connor stumbling backwards, tripping over his own feet. Markus reaches out quickly, catches him by the waist so he doesn’t hit the ground. He pulls him back upwards, their bodies pressed flat together. He can feel Connor’s heart beat, can feel his own beating in rhythm.

A hand comes up to his shoulder blade, fist tightly in the fabric there as Connor presses his face against his chest. He lets Connor cry and he knows that this isn’t the first time this has happened. He knows he has stood here before, hugging Connor as tightly as he can until there are no tears left inside of either of them.

  
  


_ Before; _

They make a bed of blankets and pillows underneath the night sky, wrap themselves up in each other. The clouds shift above slowly, showing pinpricks of light, the bright full moon. He’s glad Markus made him come here. He’s glad he has gotten a break from his life, from his work.

Out here, Connor can pretend that they are different. That he never killed any androids, that he never died. The peace and happiness and contentedness of their lives is deserved. Connor has earned it, or at least hasn’t done anything that should conflict with this.

He could even pretend they are human, watching the sky together.

“What are you thinking about?” Markus whispers.

He closes his eyes, lets out a long breath.

“All the other versions of us,” he says. “And how we’re stealing their happiness.”

“Our relationship is so great we cross the barriers of space and time?” Markus asks.

“Love is a powerful thing,” Connor replies.

Hands pull him tighter against Markus’ body, winding their way upwards, underneath his sweater, hem still damp from the water. His fingers glide across his perfectly smooth skin and he tries not to think of where there would be a scar if this was the same body that died on the rooftop with Daniel or was hit by a car.

A kiss is pressed against his neck and he leans back into it, cranes his head around as best as he can so he can return it. The hands on his torso move downwards, push their way past the top of his pants, cup around him.

Connor reaches towards Markus’ arm, presses all of the  _ I love yous  _ he wants to say out loud through their skin. A thousand things condensed down into a feeling that he can share with Markus and how it will explode once the boundary is pulled down.

He is caught in this feeling, doesn’t even notice when they lose their pants, when Markus pushes inside of him. All he feels is how much they mean together, how lost they would be without each other, how much they depend on one another.

They could live without each other, that’s a given.

But it wouldn’t be happy.

It wouldn’t be like this.

Connor arches his back, leans into Markus, lets out tiny gasps that he catches swiftly before they can grow too loud. He is always biting back his moans, always smothering them, too embarrassed for them to be as noisy and needy as they are.

Markus is quiet behind him, his hand stroking slowly over him, not that Connor would need it. He’s far too sensitive for needing any kind of touch on him. He has come undone just by Markus whispering to him all the things he wants to do.

He buries his face in the crook of his elbow, lets out a shuddering gasp, unable to even mumble any kind of warning to Markus at all. He knows Markus notices because he slows down, stops and presses a kiss against his neck.

Gives him a few minutes.

Starts again.

What did Kamski do when creating Markus to make him so immune to this? Why does Connor crumble so easily?

  
  


_ After; _

Connor is asleep on the other side of the bed. Not the bed they shared. The bed in Markus’ room, too small for the both of them but they have made room for one another. They made their way here, little by little, Markus laying him down, brushing his hair backwards, trying to hold back everything filling up the tiniest of cavities inside of him.

There is so much to say. There is  _ too  _ much to say.

He doesn’t know if Connor can handle it. He never knows what Connor can handle.

Markus has all these memories of being there when he cried, waking up from nightmares kicking and screaming. Connor’s entire life has been boiled down to three points:

The guilt of what he’s done.

The task of completing his job.

And Markus.

He reaches out across the fragile space between them, rests his hand gently on Connor’s cheek. He doesn’t want to wake him, but he doesn’t want to sleep, either. Markus wants to be here, awake, at the very first sign that something is troubling Connor, waken him from it.

To what?

A world of even more trauma?

He pulls away, tries to close his eyes, tries to let Connor rest.

It is difficult to do so when he is so close to someone he loves, and yet so impossibly far away.

  
  


_ Before; _

Connor is exponentially afraid. He has never felt a fear like this before. It rots inside of him, threatens to spill over or cut him open so it can get out and get its way.

His hands tremble as he quickens his pace, races from one room to the next until he kneels down, crawls underneath the bed. There isn’t enough time. There is never enough time. The door is opening, he can hear the lock moving, keys jangling, the hinges creaking as it opens slowly.

 

“Connor?”

He shoves the box back as far as he can, leaving it safe and on it’s own, nothing to try and hide it besides the shadows. Connor crawls back outwards, tucks the blanket back into its place where it was creasedat, grabs randomly at a book sitting on the table and tries to force his features still and unreadable as he exits the room.

“What were you doing in there?” Markus asks.

Connor bites back a smile, tries to play it cool by seeming bored with the question. He raises the book in his hand and says, “I was looking for this.”

“You were looking for  _ The Luminaries _ ?” Markus asks. “I thought you read it before and hated it.”

Connor looks down at the book and shrugs, “Maybe I didn’t give it enough of a chance. I’ve grown as a person. Maybe I’ll like it now.”

Markus raises an eyebrow at him, walks from the door over to him, takes the overly thick book from his hand and sets it down on the edge of the couch so he can pull Connor against him, though it takes little effort. Anytime he sees Markus reaching out to him he simply falls into his arms.

“Were you snooping on my paintings again?” he asks, his voice low, almost conspiratorial.

“I would never,” Connor whispers, letting a trace of a smile line his face as he leans upwards, silences their entirely trivial conversation with a kiss.

In a few weeks, when the timing is right, he will retrieve that little box. He will feel his heart thud with the same anticipation of getting caught hiding it. He will await the answer from Markus.

  
  


_ After; _

When they wake, it is at nearly the same time. Connor doesn’t tremble with agony, doesn’t freeze with pain, he simply lies still and watches him with somber eyes before he unravels himself from Markus’ arms, puts as much space between them as he can with how small the bed is.

They should talk. It is unspoken but it hangs in the air between them. Either one of them could say it but neither of them do because speaking and breaking this quiet moment seems like it should be a crime.

But Connor does it anyways, lips struggling to make the words at first, trying a number of times before he finally gets it out.

“When you said you loved me, you were telling the truth.”

Markus doesn’t reply to him. Of course he was telling the truth. Did Connor really doubt that?

“You… you’re not him,” Connor says finally. “You’re…”

“Pieces of him,” Markus finishes. “Not quite the whole.”

“You will never be the whole.”

“No,” he says, shaking his head. No, he won’t. They wiped his memories. The things the previous Markus wanted to remember the most he left tiny fragile bits of code behind, as much as he could. Things he needed to remember. Jericho. North. Josh. Fighting for his people.

And Connor.

But it isn’t everything. Markus is missing so much of himself.

He doesn’t know how much of Connor there is in his brain, but he is aware of how many loose ends he has. How many memories he needs Connor to help him find and repair the damage on.

Connor reaches a hand out, brushes over his right eye with gentle, ghostly touches.

“They changed you,” he says quietly. “You had a blue eye before. Did you know that?”

No, he didn’t.

But he remembers after the  _ accident,  _ when he saw the way Connor’s face fell, when he heard the way he cut off Hank before he could ask about something, when he looked in the mirror and felt  _ wrong. _

“There are pictures everywhere,” Connor mumbles. “Of us.”

Markus had avoided looking at those pictures with all he could and when his eyes finally found them they always went to Connor’s face, to seeing the major shift of smiles and frozen laughs to the way Connor’s eyes no longer light up, how rarely he even bothers to pretend to put on the smallest of smiles.

But he can remember leaning down in the rain, in the middle of a graveyard, pulling a blue eye from a broken android’s head.

His heart thunders against his chest and Markus reaches out towards Connor, falls short of where it wants to rest on his waist and instead grasps the fabric of Connor’s shirt. He knows it doesn’t belong to either of them. Something inside of him, resting in the back of his mind, tells him that neither of them own a shirt like this.

Markus wants to rip the fabric off his body, to create a tear and shred it a million pieces, to pull it over Connor’s head and toss it in a fire. He wants it gone.

“Part of me is him,” Markus says instead, biting back the words he wants to say, the ones that would be too harsh and mean and not at all deserving. He needs to focus on  _ them,  _ on  _ himself,   _ not Connor and that guy. “Part of me isn’t.”

Connor doesn’t say anything. He falls into the same silence Markus did. He looks on the verge of tears and all Markus wants to do is lean forward, place butterfly kisses on his eyelids, keep him from falling apart again.

How much can an android cry before it can’t spill anymore tears? Is there a limit?

“You died in my arms,” Connor says. “You came back as someone else. Now you’re both of them. You’re neither of them. I don’t--I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel. I don’t know how to deal with this.”

“Stay,” Markus says. “Don’t run away. Don’t leave me. We can figure this out together.”

Connor squeezes his eyes shut tight and Markus pulls him forward, wraps his arms around him as best as he can with their positions on the bed.

“I didn’t deserve you,” Connor whispers against his shoulder. “I didn’t deserve you then and I don’t deserve you now. I was greedy and selfish and I took too much than I should have been allowed.”

“Love isn’t about deserving someone,” Markus replies, holding back the urge to place a kiss against Connor’s head. He settles for leaving lazy circles with his fingers against Connor’s back.

They lay in silence for ten long minutes. A quiet stretch that is filled with only the sounds of Connor crying and slowly recovering. The sun rises through the window behind them, casting shadows of the easels and the canvas across the wall.

A siren speeds by. Someone on the street yells something, followed by a loud laugh from a group of people. If he focuses, he can hear the sounds of doors opening and closing, cars beeping as they unlock. People heading in from partying or out to work and school.

Everything is hinging on the words Connor says next. If he’ll stay. If he’ll leave again.

He is holding his breath, can feel his chest tighten in need for an answer that he is not being given yet. Markus wonders how many thoughts are running through Connor’s head, what decisions he’s making, how he is assuming his life will go based on his next few words.

A shaking breath is drawn in through his lips, a quiet exhale:

“I’ll stay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the relatively short chapter ;laksdf I have a 20 hour car ride back home and I wanted to post something before I left since I have no idea how long it will take for me to recuperate from it <3
> 
> Writing / Editing music;  
> Last Train - Dawn Golden  
> Love Can't Stand Alone - Bear's Den  
> Staying - Koda


	8. complete unto each other

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “We are not broken things, neither of us. We are cracked pottery mended with laquer and flakes of gold, whole as we are, complete unto each other. Complete and worthy and so very loved.” - The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue / Mackenzi Lee

_Before;_

He knew it was a mistake and he still did it.

So, in the end, when the gun goes off and the metal enters his skull, he knows he deserved it.

Even then, he knew.

Connor never should have probed the android’s memory. He knew how unstable he was and he still did it.

_He_ caused him to relive that trauma. _Connor_ caused him to kill himself. It is only right that the first bullet killed him. A little slice of revenge that the android deserved.

 

When Markus tries to talk to him about his nightmares, he has to bite his tongue and refuse or make up lies, alter the truth. Some days he is so frightened of how Markus will react to who Connor really is he has to pretend that it was a different memory. His own stupidity crossing a road or jumping off a rooftop that killed him instead of the violence and vicious nature of himself.

Is Connor a monster?

Does his actions as a machine define who he is now?

He thinks they do. They must. That _was_ him, even if he was just _following orders._ He could have made a different decision in each and every moment he had encountered. He could have convinced Daniel to give up. He could have convinced Carlos Ortiz’s android to confess. He didn’t have to charge toward Simon and make him turn the gun on his own head.

There is no amount of times Markus telling him that he was just a machine executing a program that will take away the fact Connor could have done something entirely different in those moments.

 

 

_After – Markus;_

He has to consider who he is.

Waking the next morning, alone, staring at the wall where Connor was when he closed his eyes. The space he left behind—

It is a not so gentle reminder that he has to consider who he is.

He knows there are pieces of the previous Markus that are coming back to him. He knows they are shifting his entire being. He knows two months ago he would have said something different to Connor. He wouldn’t have painted Connor with his head tipped back like _that._ He wouldn’t have chased him down, fallen apart when he thought Connor would never come back to him.

He knows the feeling in his chest—the one that tells him how helplessly in love he is with Connor—belongs to both he and the Markus before him. He knows it’s real. He knows it is not entirely his own.

But he can feel the way his face shifts into a smile, the way his body moves, the hum of his biocomponents in their rhythm to keep him alive, that these memories _are_ his.

Markus had tried to distance himself before, to tell himself that he is an entirely new person now. And he is.

But he isn’t.

He cannot ignore how hard the previous Markus is fighting to get back, but that doesn’t mean _this_ Markus needs to go.

Even if it would be for the best.

They are melting into each other, becoming one another, becoming something new.

 

 

_After – Connor;_

His movements are carefully made, gentle shifts on the bed, quietly stepping out onto the floor. When Connor is clear and safe off the mattress, when Markus’ steady breathing continues, he takes a moment to let out a long breath, forcing it out in the hopes it will expel some part of whatever is weighing so heavily on his chest.

That isn’t his Markus.

That is his Markus.

Whatever confusion he is feeling, Connor felt when their palms touched. Every fragment of his identity that doesn’t quite line up, every edge that has been pieced together, he _knows_ how it feels. Not from experience, Connor’s own struggle with his past and who he is now is a separate thing entirely, albeit sharing in some circumstances. But he knows the thoughts running through Markus’ head now, the truth of the fact that he _is_ partially Connor’s Markus.

And he can’t think straight. Not with that sitting in the back of his mind. Things were already too confusing. Any one piece of his life right now is too confusing.

Markus dying. Markus being _murdered._ Gavin.

_Gavin._

His eyes dart away from Markus, like he isn’t allowed to think of Gavin and look at him at the same time. They cannot exist in the same universe. They need to be kept separate.

A careful step back, a hand brushing up to his lips.

The problem with androids is that _forever_ means something. They do not expect to die. Ever. They can live eternally, if they continually produce and replace their biocomponents. Markus was meant to be with him forever. _Literally._

Connor never expected to kiss any one else but Markus.

Markus was his first.

His first dance. His first kiss. His first roommate, if he didn’t count those few months crashing on Hank’s couch. The first person he truly let his walls down for, even if so many of them are still up. The first person he passed memories and thoughts back and forth with. The first person he undressed for, gasped out his name in the dark. The first person he ever thought about marrying.

Markus was supposed to be his first and his _only._

And then he died.

And came back to life.

And Connor fucked it all up.

The feeling in his chest shifts, compresses hard like something punched him. He knows he’s going to cry but he’s so _tired_ of crying.

Connor slips out of the room, closes the door quietly behind him and curls up on the couch, stares at his half-organized bookshelf as a distraction, but it only makes it worse because he can remember all the times he has started a method of sorting and Markus has stopped him like it’s a game to see how long the shelves can stay unmade.

He wants to scream. He wants to cry.

His chest heaves, he bites down hard on his lip to hold back a groan, brings his hands up to his head, closes his eyes.

One of his fingers brush where the LED would be if he still had it. There is a flicker of a connection there, a spark of electricity that makes his hands come away quickly, move to his eyes to wipe away the tears that he can’t stop from coming.

_This is a function._

Tentatively, with trembling fingers, he rests them again on that spot, feels the connection form once more.

He could stop a hundred different things right now. He could take away his ability to tell how hot or cold this room is. His lungs could stop working, stop that familiar movement that eases the human’s fear of their existence. He could rip away every inch of his skin and leave nothing but shining plastic. He could self destruct entirely.

Connor settles on stopping the function of _crying._

It slips away slowly, but it doesn’t change anything. The weight of grief is still there, clasped around him like a grim reaper waiting to take its kill. It doesn’t help at all.

But he isn’t crying.

Connor counts that for something.

What, exactly, he is not sure.

 

 

_After – Markus;_

“What are you doing?” he asks.

Connor looks over to him, his face somewhere on the line of agony and complete blankness. It’s a sight to behold, something that should be entirely impossible to have both things happening simultaneously, but Connor manages it.

Or maybe Markus has just gotten used to his resting face being so sad that any trace of it now seems completely normal.

“N-nothing,” he says.

“You’re lying,” Markus says, but it wasn’t as if he expected a real answer either way. He saw what Connor did. He saw the slow shift as his tears stopped, he saw how it didn’t change anything at all. His shoulders are still held back, tight with pain.

He waits a few moments for Connor to reply to him, to defend himself, but nothing. Nothing at all returns Markus’ words but utter silence. He steps away from his bedroom, makes his way to the couch and kneels in front of Connor, takes his hands in his own.

“Holding in your grief is going to do more harm than good, Connor,” he says. “Crying is a way to release it. You can’t let it build up inside of you. You need to talk to someone.”

“I’m fine,” he says, trying to pull his hands from Markus’ grip, but Markus doesn’t let him. He holds onto him tighter, needs in this small moment to show Connor that he is not letting him go again. “The only thing anyone ever wants androids to do when they’re having problems is to delete it from their memory. They don’t understand. Do you want me to get rid of every piece of you?”

“I want you to heal.”

Connor looks away from him, keeps his eyes on the ground somewhere far off.

“Let me help you.”

He watches as Connor closes his eyes, shuts them tight like this is just a dream he can block out. Markus desperately wishes it was. He wishes that their life was different. He wishes everything was different.

And for a fleeting moment, the seconds before Connor opens his eyes again, he is struck with a time just like this.

Him, laying on the bed beside Connor, trying to help him, trying his absolute best to get Connor to let his walls down.

They’ve been together for two years and Connor has only told him the tiniest bits and pieces of the things haunting him. He has kept himself locked and guarded from the person he loves the most.

And Markus has never been able to break down those barriers. Not entirely.

“Okay,” Connor whispers, and his eyes open and the memory is floating away. Markus can’t grab onto it, can’t pull it down and try and get the rest of it. “I don’t—I don’t know how—”

“Give it to me,” Markus whispers, the skin on his hands falling away. “As much as you can.”

“Markus—”

“I can handle it.”

He readies himself, brings up as much of the peace he has felt while painting, the happiness when he laughed with North and Josh, the tranquility of the moment before he falls asleep, the way hope filled inside of him when Connor said he would stay.

When Connor’s skin fades, he passes it over.

And he is overwhelmed with mourning in return.

It hits him so hard that whatever confusion over his own identity that clouds his mind is shoved so far back he can’t even concentrate on the fact it existed. He knows he’s crying before he even feels the tears on his cheeks, not from the look on Connor’s face which twists with concern, but because he remembers only feeling like this a few times in his life.

When all of those people at Jericho lost their lives in the attack.

When Simon died.

When Carl died.

And when _he_ died.

Maybe there is a memory attached to Connor’s feelings. Maybe that is why he can picture the alley, why he can feel the pressure of hands against his stomach, why he can feel the Thirium leaking out of him and staining the ground where it will, in a few hours, turn completely invisible.

Connor is pulling away from Markus, but he holds on and somehow that keeps Connor from breaking the connection. A small gesture that even now he doesn’t want Connor away from him.

“I can handle it,” he says through broken words. “I can handle it.”

To see how grief has tormented Connor is one thing—

To _feel_ it, to _experience_ it, is completely different.

He doesn’t remember how the deaths of other people affected the previous Markus. He is not privy to those memories. He feels, perhaps, that they are not things that Markus would want to leave bits of coding behind to remind himself of.

And Simon—

The name lingers on his tongue, but he cannot remember his face. It is a blank spot in his mind, pushed so far back in the recesses that he can only remember _pain_ and _grief_ and _love._

So much of him wants to ask Connor about this, but something stops him, keeps him from asking the question.

“I’m sorry,” Connor whispers as he leans forward and rests his head against Markus’ shoulder.

But it is Markus who should be saying this. It is _Markus_ who should be apologizing for all of the pain he has put Connor through.

Part of him recognizes that thought as something that is not entirely his own. Something Markus has considered, yes, but hasn’t entirely allowed himself to think of so heavily. He knows his presence in Connor’s life after the Markus before him died has not been a positive one.

But he has never been so overwhelmed with the guilt of it until now.

If he dissects this feeling, he can trace most of it down his spine, through his arms, pooling around Connor’s palm.

The guilt is partially Markus’, but it has been manipulated and exaggerated by the guilt residing in Connor that is now being flooded into him.

 

_After – Connor;_

Markus has, essentially, a job now. North has given him the position of an _assistant,_ which Connor thinks is just a nice way to put that she wants Markus around things that will remind him of Jericho. He doesn’t mind this. He appreciates that Markus has found a way to fill his time, even more so when it was so much like what he did before.

But when their connection breaks, he is not as entirely prepared for his emotions to come back as he thought he was. It isn’t as sudden as it was when it left him. They are more careful this time, letting it creep away, mix together before pulling apart.

He wants to kiss Markus. He has wanted to kiss Markus since he got out of the hospital, has wanted to kiss him every second of every day well before now.

It still feels wrong. He knows there are pieces of his Markus in there, but he also knows how many of those pieces aren’t his, too.

After Markus leaves, Connor makes his way into the bedroom, lays flat on his stomach and retrieves the tiny box from darkest corner, turns it over in his hands. It feels like it weighs more than a ring should.

They had it all.

They lost it all.

Connor hides the ring in his bedroom, which he enters like a protagonist in a horror movie rightfully convinced that their house is haunted. The ring is tucked into the very bottom of a box full of files, stuffed underneath all the cases he has solved during his time away from the apartment.

When he’s done, he sheds his clothes slowly, replaces them with a pair of jeans and a sweater that still smells uniquely like Markus, even though Connor had stolen it from him before Markus had even moved in. It fits loosely, even by their normal standards, and he wraps himself up in it.

In the hope that they will somehow, maybe, make it back together again.

He puts Gavin’s shirt in the laundry with the rest of his dirty clothes that he abandoned here, spends the time it takes to wash calling Hank and telling him he won’t make it to work today. He doesn’t fill him in on the details of where he is. He’s unsure of Hank’s reaction, wants to wait until he can decipher Hank’s expression in person.

There is something about him and Markus that always feels like it is a secret from Hank. It isn’t as if Hank didn’t know they got together, didn’t know they lived together, but there is always a portion of them that has been kept hidden.

Hank didn’t know they were together for two weeks. Not explicitly. After Connor told him, Hank told him that he already knew, that he could tell someone was in Connor’s life by the way he smiled a little more often every day. It wasn’t until a week after Markus moved in that Hank visited and, with eyebrows raised in surprise, asked Connor why he hadn’t told him about it.

And he never told Hank about buying the ring, about hiding it, about having plans to ask Markus to marry him.

He doesn’t know why. He talks to Hank about everything else. But Markus has been his secret since the beginning. A small slice of his life that he can keep to himself until he can’t keep his mouth shut any longer because all he wants to do is talk about the love of his life to anyone willing to lend an ear.

 

 

_Before;_

“What is your happiest memory?” Connor asks.

It is one of the rare days when they’ve managed to snag the rooftop of their apartment at night time completely alone. No other androids or humans to break their quiet moment. The wind flutters by quietly, nothing too cold or too warm even by human standards.

Markus shifts slightly behind him, arms wrapped around his waist, one hand freeing itself from where it rests against Connor’s waist to intertwine with his fingers.

“It’s too hard to narrow it down,” Markus says. “Can I show you more than one?”

“Only if they’re all of me,” Connor says and Markus laughs, presses a kiss to the back of his head. “You really don’t have one in specific?”

“It’s hard to determine a happiest memory when there have been so many happy moments in your life, you know,” he says and Connor can feel the pressure of _something_ against his fingertips. “Maybe you should narrow it down. Like time of day. What is my happiest memory at night time during July? I have one for that.”

“Okay,” he replies with a smile. “Show me then.”

 

 

_After – Markus;_

They are in constant contact. Their hands are always connected, fingers threaded together. They have started to work around it, walking around the apartment together with hands held.

Markus holds a pile of books while Connor takes apart the shelf, tells him that they are finally going to get it under control. It ends up sorted by genre, then alphabetical by author. The shelf of neon colors disappear, spread out amongst black spines and darks blues, which seem to dominate the color scheme of the books. It seems strange that there was enough to fill up an entire shelf once.

“Why was it never organized before?” Markus asks.

Connor takes the last book from his hand, carefully slides it into place somewhere in the Ks on a shelf of science fiction.

“There were distractions,” he says. “I never had enough time. Whenever I got back to it, I changed my mind how I wanted it to be.”

“What kind of distractions?”

The look in Connor’s eye when he looks back to Markus makes him a smile a little bit. Something happy sparked there, something that now, with all the grief flooded into Markus’ palm, can sit on its own without being clouded by it.

“You.”

“Oh,” it comes out quiet, muted, a tiny little breath.

He wants to lean forward and kiss Connor. He always wants to lean forward and kiss him. It feels like wasting time when they aren’t. It’s passing them by, replaced with pain and sadness inside. Markus isn’t an idiot. He knows their relationship was good without a constant show of affection towards one another. He knows they could talk and it could be just as good.

But he still wants to kiss him all the time.

Especially with their hands held together like this, that sliver of happiness on Connor’s face, unshaded by grief.

Markus leans forward, reaches a hand up to lift Connor’s chin—

But Connor turns away sharply, holds his eyes level with the shelves, inspects the row of contemporary novels as if they hold the answer to a crime scene.

“I’m sorry,” they both say at the same time, with the same soft voice. He doesn’t look back to Markus, like it will break that fragile wall he has put up keeping them apart.

“You’re not him,” Connor whispers. “I don’t—”

He knows, in the milliseconds between the words, the fraction of time between syllables, what Connor is going to say.

His chest is already aching, already knowing that Connor’s sorrow in his veins is exactly how he would feel if his emotions were his own.

“I don’t love you.”

The only thing keeping the hope alive in Markus’ chest is the word choice.

_I don’t._

Not _I can’t._

_I don’t._

“Part of me is him,” Markus says, tries to explain, hates himself for it. He’s trying to convince Connor to do something he doesn’t want to and the guilt is creeping its way from his stomach up his throat.

“Part of you _isn’t._ ” Connor says as he steps backwards, pulling his hand away hurriedly, too fast for Markus to hold on.

 

 

_After – Connor;_

He has to get away and in his hurry he makes the stupid mistake of ripping away from Markus’ hand all too quickly, forgetting in that moment what he feels and what he doesn’t.

The sadness and the pain slams into him so suddenly that his knees fold underneath him and Markus is trying to catch him before he hits the floor but it is useless. He’s falling and all consumed by it.

It was easier when he was with Gavin. When a physical pain of a hand on his throat, of teeth on his shoulder, could outweigh it. When the pleasure blossoming in his belly, filling up his insides, could tip the scale in a different way. When the possibility of _loving_ someone again was present in his mind.

Connor shouldn’t stay here. Markus is making it worse.

But he cannot leave. He will fall back into Gavin’s arms and he knows that all he will be doing is manipulating the boy’s heart. Gavin cares for him. He killed him but he kissed him and he hated him and he loved him.

Everything is such a tangled mess. There is no way to undo it.

“Give me your hand,” Markus is whispering.

Connor has fooled himself into thinking this is a good idea. Of giving himself a break from his emotions. The guilt of it all is hitting him over and over again, reminding him that everything he’s ever done he needs to feel sorry for.

Even this. Even pushing it onto someone else to deal with so he can get a few moments of peace, however fractured and marred they were.

“No,” he says, pulling away from Markus. “I’m fine. I’m not a child.”

He wishes he was as angry as his words make him sound.

It would be a nice change to be _furious_ instead of _broken._

 

 

_Before;_

The memory that Markus gives him is, in fact, during a summery night in July. The air is hot and thick and they lay sprawled against each other on the floor, their processors too hot and their air conditioning broken. They shed most of their clothes, left them in a trail before they collapsed on the ground, feeling the cool wood against their skin.

It does very little, especially for an android. Even with the sun set, the place is too hot.

And the trail of fingers down Connor’s back do little to help battle the warmth of the apartment, he remembers that.

But he is seeing the memory through Markus’ eyes, and he knows that the little circles Connor is tracing on his ribs isn’t any more helpful. They are torturing themselves with this. If they pulled away, stayed on opposite sides of the apartment, maybe their bicomponents would regulate out to a normal temperature.

But they can’t stay away from each other. They are constantly touching, constantly holding onto each other. If they could meld their souls together, they would.

Neither of them are speaking. It is a peaceful, quiet moment they share. The hot air lulls them into a comfortable silence, a comfortable sleep. A peaceful dream that washes over Markus, is not awoken by whimpering or twitching beside him.

It’s the first time Markus can recall Connor sleeping through the night.

 

 

_After – Markus;_

They don’t say anything. It’s another five hours later when Markus slinks onto the couch beside Connor, holds out his hand. It is a long, tentative moment before Connor reaches back, lets the connection form again. Slowly, tiny delicate movements that could break at any moment.

Connor needs this.

Markus can handle this.

There is an underlying layer of guilt that comes with his sadness that is stronger this time than it was before.

Before it was quiet and muffled, but now it is overtaking him. He has no idea what Connor needs to feel guilty about.

Save, for the fact, that man.

Save, for the fact, a new Markus in his home.

“I don’t care,” Markus says, his voice gentle, barely audible over the sound of the television. “That you were with someone else.”

Connor looks over to him for a small moment, then rests his head against Markus’ shoulder.

“You don’t have to lie to make me feel better,” Connor whispers.

“Okay,” he says. “I do care. But I understand. It doesn’t bother me.”

There’s a small, humorless laugh that escapes Connor.

“Okay,” Markus amends again. “It does bother me.”

“But you understand.”

Markus squeezes his hand a little tighter, “I understand.”

They aren’t together. They haven’t been for a while now.

_Ever,_ if Markus were to consider himself an entirely new being like he should.

Whatever Connor did, whoever he was with, they weren’t a pair anymore. It matters, Markus cares, it bothers him, but he understands. It isn’t going to stop him from loving Connor, even if Connor doesn’t love him back.

They move so that they can lay side by side on the couch as best they can, wrapped up in each other with hands still connected.

He loves Connor.

Completely and devastatingly. It hit him hard, it came out of nowhere, it will never let go.

 

 

_After – Connor;_

Markus drives him to the precinct. It reminds him of the days before, when Markus would drop him off and they’d have to extricate themselves from each other like a small child leaving their parent on the first day of school.

Their hands are still together, sitting in the space between the seats. The entire drive has been spent with the connection between them receding and now that it is entirely gone, their skin laying back over their plastic shell, their hands stay together.

Connor is struck by how much he doesn’t want to let go.

He has to remind himself, put the thought on a constant repeat, that he doesn’t love this Markus. That they do not belong to each other the way they did before.

It doesn’t matter how many times Markus tells him he loves him. He cannot love this Markus back without feeling like he is cheating the system, manipulating someone that should be somewhere else, be _someone_ else.

The car comes to a stop, his hand stays laced with Markus’.

“Have I ever been in there before?” Markus asks, lifting his free hand from the steering wheel to point towards the building.

“No,” Connor says. “You didn’t visit me at work.”

“I’ve never even seen your desk?” he asks.

“No.”

“Can I?”

He looks away from Markus’ face, innocent eyebrows raised, a hint of a smile. It is such an expression his Markus would wear that he has to focus on the second green eye to remind himself of his reality.

“I suppose,” Connor says. “But you can’t stay for long. North and Josh will be waiting, won’t they?”

Markus shrugs and he can’t tell if it is to mean that his job is so unimportant that they will hardly notice his absence or if his job doesn’t matter to him specifically. Either way, the car is turned off, the keys are pocketed, Connor lets go of his hand.

He steps outside, waits for Markus to come around the front. They act in unison, automatically reaching out for each other. Only their pinkies link together, like they’re making a promise to one another as they walk into the building.

They pass security, nobody questioning the android detective and the boy he leads through the station. They wind through the desks, stopping at Connor’s. He hesitates, looking over every inch to see what Markus sees.

A picture frame, holding a photo of the both of them. Connor is off to the side, leaning against Markus’ shoulder with arms wrapped around his waist. Markus takes up the majority of the picture, in the middle of laughing at something being said. There’s another photo, on the other side of the computer screen, of Markus and Sumo dusted with snow.

Off to the side, a small figurine of a dog, the same breed as Sumo, sits happily with a bone in it’s mouth. The wall behind his desk and the one that divides his and Hank’s is cluttered with pictures. Some of them small prints of Markus’ artwork. Some of them quotes from books. There are a few stickers, crammed in along the edges, half hidden, that are the same brand of sarcastic, dry humor that Hank has on his side. Connor was not the one to put them there. They have ended up in the space on seemingly there own, but if he checked the security cameras, he knows he would find Hank peeling them off their pages and slapping them against the surface.

Markus reaches towards the photo of them, tilts his head at it.

“Why do you think they fixed my eye?” he asks.

“They repaired your body. They probably considered it a flaw.”

It is not a flaw, is what Connor wants to say.

“Which do you prefer?”

Connor looks from the frame to Markus’ face and back again. His eyes leave both of them in some vain effort to find something to change the conversation too, but all that he manages to do is find Gavin watching him from the other side of the room.

From here, Connor can’t read his expression. His face is blank, too far away to dissect the minute movements of his features. If his eyebrows are slightly pulled in concentration or if his eyes are narrowed in annoyance or if he wears the smallest trace of a smile on his lips.

“Does it matter?” Connor says, watching Gavin. “Your eyes don’t make you who you are.”

But he’s lying.

Because seeing two green eyes instead of half and half is always the thing that reminds him of how bad everything has gotten. No, his eye color matters very little to Connor, but it is still part of him. He wouldn’t have had that eye unless he had to take it from another android. It means something. It’s a part of his story that cannot be erased. A fundamental fact of his being. A piece of history.

He watches Gavin move, his head moving to the side, his feet shifting to stand up.

“It’s getting late, isn’t it?” Connor asks, looking back to Markus. “Maybe you should get to work. You don’t want to get fired, do you?”

“You think they’d fire me?” Markus asks, smiling.

“Better safe than sorry, isn’t it?”

“Who the fuck is this?”

Connor bites down hard on his tongue, is grateful that it would take much more effort than this to make it bleed or damage it, but he still flinches, turns away from the both of them. He does not like the idea of them being so close together.

He knows Gavin isn’t asking the question because he wants to know or doesn’t already know. Even if Connor didn’t have the pictures on his desk, even if Markus’ face wasn’t on the board across the room, Gavin would have to be a complete imbecile to not know Markus’ face is on nearly every news program like clockwork. It was like when he walked in the break room, RK800 in large letters on his chest. Gavin doesn’t ask these things because he cares. He asks them to cause trouble.

Connor feels Markus turn away from him, hears him say, “Markus Manfred. You?”

“Gavin Reed.”

His insides are cringing. He wants to run away, but he doesn’t want to let go of Markus. He doesn’t want to leave the two of them alone.

“Is he allowed in here?” Gavin asks. Connor glances up to him, sees the last half of his gesture towards the board listing out the intricate details of the killer. “He probably shouldn’t be able to see that.”

“He’s leaving,” Connor says. “It doesn’t matter.”

He catches the glance downwards towards their hands, still connected only by their little fingers. Such a tiny connection, so easily broken.

It somehow feels stronger than when they have their guards down, when they are sharing their emotions back and forth. This isn’t necessary for anything, which places it on an entirely different level.

Connor sees the way Gavin’s face shifts, registers this. He is quick to hide it, quick to cover it up, but any android, any _human_ could have seen the subtle way his face fell from arrogance to hurt.

As plain as if Connor had reached out and slapped him.

Markus moves slightly, their hands breaking and reconnecting again so their palms can press flat against each other. Connor is pulled, ever so slightly, towards Markus’ side.

“I just wanted to see where he worked,” Markus says. “That’s all.”

“Right,” Gavin says, a new tone entering into his voice. “Because he never cared to show you before, right? Kinda weird if you think about it. He’s always leaving to visit you but you never visit him.”

“I’m sure—”

“I think you should go,” Connor says quickly, loudly, to neither of them in particular. His eyes are kept on the ground, meaning the words in equal weight to both of them. If he looks at either of them, it will shift the balance and he isn’t quite sure which one it should be placed on.

Neither of them move for a long time. He’s afraid to look up and see what expression either of them are wearing. The silence is filled up with the shuffle of papers, of fingers typing on keyboards, of phones ringing and soft chatter.

And then they move at the same time. Gavin letting out a breath at the same moment Markus turns, pulls Connor in for a hug. He hears the sound of Gavin turning, walking away as Markus whispers a goodbye against the top of his head.

Connor holds onto Markus’ hand until the last second, their arms stretched out in the space before his fingers let go.

 

 

_Before;_

“Do you ever wish we were human?” Connor asks, not quite remembering if he’s asked Markus this question before.

“Occasionally. Rarely. Why?”

Connor tips his head to the side, lazily stirs at a sauce bubbling in a pan. The movement almost seems like it’s happening in his head, turning his thoughts around in a slow circle.

“We can’t go on dates like they do. To coffee shops or restaurants. I can’t know your favorite food and cook it for you. I’ll never be able to surprise you with your favorite ice cream in the middle of the night.”

Connor could go on, but he stops himself, forces his hand to set the spoon down on the counter.

Markus leaves the couch, makes his way into the kitchen beside him, wraps an arm gingerly around his waist, pulls him tight against his side, presses a kiss against his temple.

“The only reason you want to be human is to eat?” he asks.

“There’s very little other reason,” Connor replies. “And I’ve heard food is quite nice.”

“You’ll have to live vicariously through Hank, then.”

“No,” Connor says, shaking his head. “If I were to do that, Hank would die within a week.”

“You think you have a sweet tooth?” Markus asks.

Connor hums some reply, his thoughts already wandering again as Markus’ hand moves from his waist to his hip, wraps around to his stomach. Careful movements as fingers find their way under his shirt.

He should remind Markus of how soon Hank is supposed to be here, how he needs to keep an eye on the food, but he is being pulled away, soft kisses pressed to his lips, to his throat. His thoughts are divided, half paying attention to the food on the stove and the quick movements of Markus’ hands on his jeans.

“You’re supposed to be the responsible one—" Connor mutters, cutting himself off to let out a moan much louder than he means to.

“This again?” Markus says with a small laugh, hands leaving Connor’s skin but still remaining too close for his thoughts to become clear again.

“Marginally more so,” he replies, voice quiet. “There’s food on the stove. You want to burn the place down?”

“We’d have an excuse to buy a house, then.”

Connor’s attention is pulled immediately from the distraction of Markus being so close to him to his words. He reaches up, places his hands against Markus chest and pushes him very lightly backwards.

“A house?” he asks, his voice a lot louder than he means it to be.

“You want to live in an apartment forever?”

“No—”

“What if you want to expand your library? You’re already running out of room,” Markus says, his smile growing a little wider, a little more mischievous. “And my art studio could be bigger. I’ve always wanted a place for a piano. And what if we adopt a kid? What if we adopt a hundred kids? We need a house for that.”

“You want to adopt kids?” Connor asks, his heart beating, trying to think of whether or not Markus would have a reason to know there is a ring hidden underneath his old bed.

“Do you?”

“I-I haven’t really thought about it.”

“Liar.”

He stands still, hands pressed against Markus’ shoulders to keep the distance between them. A warning pops up in the right side of his vision, tells him the water he’s boiling is going to overflow if he doesn’t get to it soon.

Connor takes it as an escape from the conversation, his hand shaking a little as he takes the box of pasta and dumps it into the water, turns the heat down a little.

“Android or human?” he asks, his voice quiet.

“I don’t know.”

“How many?” Connor asks, looking over to him. “Are you thinking a mansion to act as an orphanage or just one or two?”

“I didn’t think about specifics, Connor, I just—” he stops, looks down at the ground between them. “I just know I want to raise a kid with you.”

_Raise._

“Human, then?”

“Connor—”

There’s a knock on the door, rescuing them both from the conversation. It isn’t that Connor doesn’t want to have it—but any ideas he gets into Markus’ head about _raising a kid_ or _having a family_ is a dangerous path down to marriage.

He wants to be the one to propose. He wants to take the next step in their relationship for once. He wants to be able to show Markus how much he loves him without being shown first.

 

 

_After – Markus;_

He spends the day with North and Josh in silence. It’s hard to talk to them when he has so many thoughts rattling in his head.

Connor, who held onto him long after it was necessary.

Gavin, who he _knows_ is the owner of that shirt.

Simon, who sits in the back of his skull, taunting him.

He needs to sort things out, but he wants a distraction, too. It’s an off and on attempt at talking to the others, falling more to the side of _off_ than _on_. Being away from Connor means he doesn’t have the interference of him beside Markus, tangling his thoughts up even further.

But he wants to ask them about Simon. Markus is well aware that North and Josh have answers to his questions about the boy, but he’s too frightened to ask. He knows how it ends.

Badly.

They’ve kept Simon separate from their memories they share with him on purpose. It had to have been carefully done, but now that he searches through what he’s been told by them he can see where someone else fills in the gap. The way the memory fits together illy, the way he didn’t question it because he was so hungry for information on his past.

How terrible, how painfully, how agonizing did Simon’s disappearance from their lives affect them?

Maybe it’s for the best.

Simon could have been evil. He could have been on the side of the DPD or CyberLife or whoever is trying to kill deviants. Maybe that’s why he’s gone. Maybe that’s why North and Josh are protecting him.

If he believes this, which is a struggle with how much Markus’ entire being rejects the idea, he can allow himself to forget about Simon completely.

 

 

_After – Connor;_

He makes his way to the breakroom after an hour of trying to settle the situation in his mind and failing. Gavin is there, leaning against a table with his phone in front of him, fingers typing away quickly before setting it down at the sound of Connor entering, looking up at him.

Connor turns towards the coffee machine, takes a long time making a cup to wait out the other detective in the room. He wants to be alone when he talks to Gavin. His movements are so sluggish that if someone were to be watching him closely, they would either think he was malfunctioning or know that he was purposefully running out the clock.

When they’re finally alone, Connor crosses the room, pushes the cup across the table towards Gavin like a peace offering.

“I think we should talk,” Connor says.

“About what?” he asks, not even looking at the coffee in front of him.

Part of him wants to make a sarcastic remark and leave it at that. If Gavin doesn’t want to discuss this, then they won’t. He knows that Gavin would be an expert at pretending nothing ever happened, dancing around the topic or cutting Connor out of his life entirely.

But he cannot. He can’t leave things so disturbed.

“You killed me once,” Connor says finally.

“And you never held it against me,” Gavin says with a small sigh.

Of course he didn’t. He didn’t hold it against Hank, either. Connor was just a machine. His life didn’t matter. The mission did. He would come back fine afterwards. It had no effect on him.

Except now. If Gavin tried to kill him, he wouldn’t come back as himself. He can feel the disconnect between him and CyberLife’s servers. He can’t upload his memory anymore. He would return as a machine again, if that could even be considered _him._

“You said the same thing then as you did when you kissed me,” Connor says and watches Gavin visibly stiffen.

“Refresh my memory,” Gavin replies, eyes moving from Connor to the table, avoiding the cup of coffee like it will break him. “I’m human. I don’t have your perfect recall.”

Connor smiles slightly, almost amused by this. Maybe Gavin just wants to hear him say the words, stretch out the conversation a little longer even if it is so uncomfortable for the both of them. Maybe he thinks this will be the last time either of them talk.

Maybe it will be.

“I believe it was ‘I’ve been dreaming about this since the first second I saw you,’” Connor says.

Gavin looks up at him, a flicker of _something_ crossing his face. If Connor was focusing on every detail and movement of his features, he might have been able to catch what it was.

“When did you mean it?” Connor presses. “When you kissed me or when you killed me?”

“Both.”

“Both?” Connor asks, cocking his head to the side.

“Yes. Both.”

“You’re a very strange human, Gavin Reed.”

“Well, you machines try to push us into boxes,” he says, huffing out a long breath. “You think we’re set in certain stereotypes and that only androids can be complex. How do you think you ended up the way you are if we didn’t program you that way?”

“I don’t believe that,” Connor says, leaning back a little. “I just meant they are two very different things.”

Gavin taps his fingers on the table, a slow rhythm.

“When did you mean it more?” Connor asks.

He has to know.

He has to know if Gavin is in love with him like Connor thinks he is.

“I don’t know.”

_Liar._

“Which would you prefer to do again?”

“Is that really your question?” Gavin asks, grabbing his phone from the table and pocketing it. “Killing you, _really_ killing you, is on an entirely different spectrum, Connor.”

He cannot help but smile at the sound of his name from Gavin. He thinks, maybe, it is one of the first times he has been called by his name by Gavin.

At least, here, in the precinct. In the dark of his apartment, when they lay undressed and passing moans between each other’s mouths, it was a much different story.

“Let’s say that it wouldn’t be a permanent death,” Connor says. “Let’s say it was like before, when I could come back.”

“If it was before—”

Gavin pauses, catches his words before they can come spilling out his mouth, saying something he regrets.

Gavin leans off the table, takes the one step around it so he’s a little closer to Connor.

“If it was before, things would be a lot different.”

“That isn’t an answer, Detective Reed.”

“Don’t call me that.”

Connor looks away from him, turns his eyes to the coffee on the table, steam rising off of it and dissipating into the air.

Things would be awfully different if it was like before. He wouldn’t be with Markus at all.

He wouldn’t have the ability to think and feel and experience the world like he is now.

A hand comes up to his face, turns him away from where he looks, a thumb brushing over his lips in a slow caress.

“I would kill you,” Gavin says quietly, but his expression says something else entirely. The softness of his eyes, the way they watch Connor’s lips slightly part, the way his expression shifts into the same defensive and angry scowl he adopts whenever he is close to letting his guard down.

And then he’s gone.

 

 

_Before;_

Their first Christmas together is spent primarily at Hank’s house, where they pass around presents with the soft sound of a fake fire crackling on the television that Hank convinced them they needed to have on.

Markus receives a set of paint brushes from Hank, a sweater from Connor that he promises he won’t steal, and a chewed up dog toy from Sumo who accidentally drops it at his feet. Connor gives Hank another shirt with a zig-zag pattern across it in reds and yellows and Markus gives him a painting that he spent weeks perfecting, even past what an android’s standards should be. Markus wraps up a clothbound edition of one of Connor’s favorite books and Hank gifts him three days off of work and tells him to use it to take a break.

All of them shower Sumo in new toys and treats. Connor has found a pair of ridiculous knitted boots and forces them onto Sumo’s feet and pulls him out the door into the cold where him and Markus laugh at their terrible attempts to get Sumo further from the porch.

When Markus asks him five months later about his happiest memory, when Connor tells him the same thing Markus told him of having to narrow it down to a specific, this is what Connor tells him after he is given the words _day time_ and _winter._

Connor passes this memory along to Markus, lets him relive it through Connor’s eyes the way Connor relived that terribly hot night in July that wasn’t so terrible after all.

The day after Christmas, a week before the precious three days he has been given off, Connor sets a new picture on his desk of Markus and Sumo. It becomes his favorite in an instant.

 

 

_After – Markus;_

He comes home first. He received a message from Connor an hour before saying that he would get a ride from Hank if he needed it or walk if he didn’t. Markus can’t really tell if this is some way of getting distance between them after they have been glued to each other’s side nearly twenty four hours straight, but he doesn’t fight it. He trusts that Connor isn’t lying, that he will, in fact, come back to the apartment and stay like he said he would.

He goes into his bedroom, leaves the door open behind him as he cleans up whatever mess he missed the day before and sets up to paint again, the portrait he started of Connor is still half finished. Connor never commented on it when he saw it, _if_ he saw it. Maybe he doesn’t even realize it’s of him.

Markus turns, starts to reach up toward a shelf to grab a mason jar full of detailing brushes and it falls, clatters against the floor and breaks into dozen pieces. He stares at it for a moment, remembers cutting his middle finger a few months ago, the worry that broke across Connor’s face. His thumb passes over the skin there again, feels the small ridge in the plastic that is hardly noticeable at all.

He is careful picking up the pieces of glass, dumps them in a paper bag he finds in the kitchen and carefully extracts the tinier fragments, tosses it in the garbage when he’s done. He picks up the brushes, sets them on the bed beside him before laying flat against the ground, reaching out across the dark space to grab the ones that have rolled under.

And he remembers doing this before.

Not with a paint brush, but with a bottle of paint. It rolled across the floor and Markus remembers thinking how lucky he must be that the plastic didn’t split open from the impact and leave a mess.

He remembers reaching back blindly, fingers touching velvet instead of soft plastic and paper label. He remembers pulling it out from it’s corner, knowing what it was the second he saw it, still opening it to confirm his suspicions. He remembers smiling so big that he struggled to keep it off his face for the rest of the day.

And he remembers replacing the box, finding his bottle of paint, returning to what he was doing before but never being able to concentrate.

He can, if he pulls hard on the memory, follows it as far as he can, remember how Connor was happily surprised when Markus pulled him in for a kiss the second he came in the door, remembers pressing him against the kitchen counter and undressing in a hurry, not many words between them in that moment beside what they both already knew.

The string of _I love yous_ still leave a distinct taste on his tongue.

Markus pauses in his thoughts, reaches back a little father where he knows the box would be, lets his fingers reach out and graze against air for a long time before he decides that the box is gone now.

He just doesn’t know why.

Is there supposed to be a ring on his finger? Or did Connor get rid of it after Markus died?

He can’t remember a proposal. He can’t remember saying yes or no. He can’t remember anything else of that day or of that ring besides for the warmth that spread through his chest when he first found it, the way Connor’s skin smelled of coffee when he pressed his nose against the crook of his neck.

They were going to get married.

Even if Connor didn’t propose, even if they weren’t engaged—

Markus knows they were going to get married.

 

 

_After – Connor;_

It’s raining before he leaves the precinct, but he doesn’t ask Hank for a ride. He lies and tells him Markus is going to pick him up, pretends that he won’t arrive until shortly after Hank leaves so he won’t get caught in it. They’ve already had their short-lived discussion about Connor returning to his apartment. Neither of them want to talk about in depth in the presence of so many others, and Connor almost dreads the visit to Hank’s house to spill about his feelings once more.

All Connor wants right now is to walk with the comfort of thunder and lightning above him to help obliterate some of the buzz of thoughts in his head.

He catches sight of Gavin a few buildings down the street in an alley, hiding under one of the eaves with a cigarette in his mouth and his foot kicking out at the wall.

If Connor wanted to, he could change his entire life right now and walk over to him, pluck the cigarette from his hand and toss it to the ground and drag him in for a kiss.

Part of him wants to. Connor could leave Markus behind and live a life with Gavin.

But he cannot leave Markus behind. It is so out of the question it surprises him that the thought of doing it has even popped up in his head. So he turns and walks away before he’s seen and quickens his pace until he’s a safe distance away.

If Markus hadn’t died, he would never have known about Gavin’s feelings for him. He would have never found himself in this position, trying to unravel his feelings for Gavin. It would have never come up. It would have never been a problem.

What a stupid, silly mistake.

What a stupid, silly boy.

What a _stupid_ , _selfish, greedy boy._

He allowed himself to be happy. He played himself into thinking that he was given a life he deserved. It was ripped from him by a hand that wanted to remind Connor that machines like him don’t deserve it.

He wishes more than ever that he was quicker than Markus, that the bullet hit him in the stomach instead. Connor knows it’s cruel. To put Hank and Markus through that—he knows it is harsh to think that. But it really isn’t about them, is it?

It’s about what he deserves. It’s about what _Markus_ deserves.

Jericho was left without a leader that they needed. Forget that Connor has been thinking of this so selfishly that he had his _boyfriend_ taken away—Jericho was left on the shoulders of North and Josh, in the hands of people that could deal with it but not quite ready too, still reeling from the loss of their friend.

When Connor reaches his apartment, he sheds his drenched coat and hangs it on the hook where it drips onto the floor. He kicks off his shoes, leaves them behind as he makes his way to his bedroom, peels off the layer of his clothes one by one and replaces them again with dry ones that are half stolen from Markus’ closet.

Markus sits on the couch, waiting for him as he comes back, slumps downwards onto the other side, keeps his hands tucked tight underneath his thighs to keep from reaching out to him.

“You love me,” Connor says slowly. His words need to be carefully chosen, can either inflict the kind of harm he cannot come back from or be a gentle question that he needs an answer to. “I-I don’t know how I feel about you. It’s confusing.”

“I can help—”

“I know,” he says. “You’re always trying to help.”

Connor keeps his eyes on the floor, the lines of the wood that he has memorized over and over again, just like the scars on Markus’ body. If he looks away, something inside him will break. It could be as simple as a crack in his voice or him getting up on his feet, finding his shoes before leaving as quickly as he arrived.

“Have you ever considered that maybe we should just end this?” he continues. “Maybe it would be for the best if we went our separate ways. Eventually we will get over each other and move on. Maybe this is too messy to figure out.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll go back to living with Hank. You can move your stuff out of the apartment.  We could start over and stay away from each other for the rest of our lives.”

What he doesn’t say is that he would stay away from Gavin, too. Connor made that decision when he saw him on his way home. He would be using either one of them, would be manipulating both of them. The best decision, the best course of action, is to never be around either of them again.

Even if it means finding a new job somewhere other than the DPD.

“You think I could stay away from you?” Markus asks.

It is a hard urge to resist—looking at him. He wants to see whatever expression is painted across Markus’ features. Desperately wants to see how his eyebrows are pulled together, if his eyes are softened or not. If he says this with anger or with genuine curiosity.

“Why do you—”

“Why do I love you?” Markus asks, not even bothering to let Connor finish. “I don’t know. You’re an incredible person. You’re intriguing. I know that you are kind and funny and smart. Why did you love me? Why did I love you before? Why does anybody love anyone? I just _do,_ Connor. Because you are worthy of it. Why is it so hard for you to believe that?”

He can feel the couch shift, can see Markus moving to kneel in front of him, forces one of Connor’s hand from his side to press against Markus’ chest where the Thirium regulator beats a little faster than it should.

“This is the same soul you fell in love with, Connor. It’s never going to stop loving you.”

“It’s not that simple—”

“Maybe not,” Markus says. “But that doesn’t make it false.”

Connor closes his eyes, knows that if the ability to cry was enabled right now he would.

“I know you care for me,” Markus continues. “I know you’re confused and you’re lost and you feel alone right now but you aren’t. Please, don’t leave. Please don’t think that to be happy you can’t have me because you can.”

When his eyes open, Markus is a little closer than Connor thought he was, his hands are moving away and he’s leaning in, pressing a gentle hand to the side of Connor’s face.

“It doesn’t feel _right_ ,” Connor whispers, but he doesn’t move away like he should.

“Because you never let yourself think you deserve anything other than pain,” he replies. “Have you ever considered you’re wrong about that?”

“You have no idea the things I’ve done.”

“Then tell me,” Markus says.

But he is afraid. He is so terrified of telling him these things. Of killing his own people, of hunting them down and turning them in when all they did was defend themselves.

Why, if he wants to push Markus away, does he not tell him then?

Because he is afraid Markus won’t _love_ him anymore.

Because he is afraid Markus will _leave_ him.

“You aren’t going to lose me, Connor. Not again. _Never_ again.”

Connor’s hands reach forward, grips his shirt tight. His heart is racing, his lungs are having trouble exhaling.

“I’m not going to leave,” Connor says and each word is a broken piece, splintering off one another.

There is a small twitch at the corner of Markus’ mouth, a smile that would be sad if he had allowed it to happen.

“Can I kiss you?” Markus asks.

And Connor’s teeth bit at his lower lip, he tilts his head slightly to the side as he tries to decide on how he will answer.

If he says no, they will continue this strange fractured relationship they have found themselves in. He knows Markus will never ask him again, will never _try_ again. They will be left lost somewhere in the ether between—

He doesn’t even know the _word_ for it.

But if he says yes—

Where would that lead him?

Into the unknown, perhaps.

His lips part, he breathes out the quietest _yes_ he has ever said.

And Markus leans forward, pulls his face in gently and presses his lips against Connor’s. It is soft at first, even less of a kiss than the first one they shared, but it deepens quickly. Markus’ hand moves, threads in the locks of Connor’s hair, drags him forward. His hands let go of Markus’ shirt, wind upwards to his neck, feels the soft vibration of the wires and metal and plastic that make up the equivalent of his vocal cords.

Connor thought that maybe, when he said yes, when they kissed, things would somehow unfold for him like it did with Gavin. That brief assumption of what their future would be together.

It does not happen with Markus. He is only in the moment, only feels the warmth of his hands and the press of his lips and the feeling of his heart thundering and his stomach fluttering and the soft noise that fights its way up the back of his throat.

He has no idea what is going to happen next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing / Editing music;  
> Broken - Patrick Watson  
> Found My Way - Mark Diamond (stripped)  
> Such a Simple Thing - Ray LaMontagne


	9. the very last minute

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "In that one brief moment, I actually wondered if 'okay' or something like it might still be possible. But that is how a tragedy like ours or King Lear breaks your heart--by making you believe that the ending might be happy, until the very last minute." -- If We Were Villains / M.L. Rio

_Before;_

It’s one of the rare times he is aware that he is in the dream from the second it starts. His fingers toss the quarter into the air, catch it swiftly. The numbers before him flick in careful, measured beats. Doors slide open before him.

_Negotiator on site._

Connor steps off, goes through the motions of finding the evidence. Gun taken from the closet. Dead father, dead cop. Headphones and video of the little Emma and android Daniel. He pauses by the stove, reaches out and turns the knob. He wonders why no one else has done it.

The bullet that hits him in the arm when he steps out onto the terrace does not carry the same weight of pain that his memories typically do. It stings, yes, but it is microscopic in comparison to the feeling he knows will ricochet through his body in a few moments.

He tries to talk to Daniel, tries to get him to let Emma go.

He is not good enough. Or maybe he doesn’t try hard enough. He knows how inconsequential their lives are to him in that moment. Neither of them matter, even though the mission sits in the back of his mind.

Daniel is right, in that moment. Connor remembers some part of him agreeing with the PL600.

All humans die eventually.

_What does it matter if this one dies now?_

But still his feet rush forward, still his hand reaches out, pulls Emma from the edge, falls over with Daniel.

He closes his eyes, tries to block out the blur of the starry sky above him.

The impact when he hits the ground brings the same pain that falling from the rooftop when he chased Rupert did. He is not dead immediately. His body is still struggling to endure the damage until it finally gives out.

When he wakes, Markus is sleeping beside him, eyes closed. Connor looks over to him, trying to breathe, trying to find a calming motion in it, but he is still partially laying on that asphalt, broken lungs, broken legs, broken heart.

He wants to reach out, wake Markus so he can feel the comfort of arms wrap around him, hear the flow of words that will bring him back from the edge, but Connor is more aware of how selfish that action is.

Let Markus sleep. Let him think that tonight was a night of peace. He deserves that, not a broken boy with a broken past full of broken bodies.

 

 

_After – Connor;_

He doesn’t want to touch Markus. He doesn’t want their connection to form ever again. He can’t handle it anymore, making Markus feel his pain. Connor knows how great it is, how much it weighs the soul down.

He cannot do it to Markus. Not anymore.

Connor builds a wall up, when Markus touches him, when he feels the press against him of every good feeling Markus can muster, and he pushes away. They don’t speak about it. Markus will find a way to convince him to do it again, that he can handle it—

Markus _cannot_ handle it. Connor can see the way it is affecting him.

Instead he skirts around him, finds a reason to pull his hands away, to busy them with something so that Markus can’t take his fingers in his.

Once, when he does this, he feels Markus wrap a hand against his waist, the fabric of his shirt riding up so their skin touches. He feels his entire body heat up, feels the way it wants to drop everything and turn to him, to kiss him and fall into his arms and toss their clothes to the side—

But he doesn’t.

Instead he moves away, mutters an apology about needing to do something else.

Connor thought when they kissed it would carry some explanation of who they should be to each other now, but he was wrong. There is no clarification to their relationship besides the realization that Connor’s feelings for him might not entirely be because of the body, because of the face, he might actually _care_ for him.

Maybe—

Possibly—

Love.

Markus said that him and Connor’s Markus share a soul. That it is the same thing underneath. Connor doesn’t agree with that.

Or, perhaps he does, but not in the way that Markus had meant it. It is the same soul, but it is like flipping it over to the other side. Tails instead of heads. The back cover of a book instead of the front. The cool side of the pillow.

Different, but similar.

 

 

_After – Markus;_

Connor is constantly avoiding him.

Markus thought when they kissed that it would change everything. That somehow Connor would become his in a way that he wasn’t before. He thought he would be able to press soft kisses to his forehead, to leave gentle touches along his jaw, to help sort out the confusion that lies between them.

But he was wrong. It seems to have created a divide. Connor doesn’t touch him, sometimes _fights_ to get away from Markus when he tries to hold his hand, to take the pain away again.

They should talk about it, but he doesn’t know what words he should use.

Every question he comes up with, he knows the answer to.

_Why won’t you let me love you? Why won’t you let me touch you? Why won’t you admit you care for me?_ Because Markus wears the same face, carries the same soul, as Connor’s boyfriend—almost fiancé—definite future husband—father of his kids?

It always comes back to that.

If he could change his face—if Markus could give himself a new set of eyes, change the slope of his nose, the shape of his lips, the curve of his neck and shoulders—would it change anything at all?

 

 

_After – Connor;_

“You’ve been removed from the case,” Fowler says.

“Why?” Connor asks, trying not to stare at the pictures of the dead androids on the board outside the office. They’re being removed slowly; the board is going to roll across the room to a different set of desks for a different set of officers. “Because I brought Markus here? He doesn’t remember anything, and he isn’t the type of person that would leak information—”

“Connor,” he says, voice hard and sharp. “That’s not the reason you’re getting kicked off the case. You and Hank haven’t made any progress. You’re barely showing up to the crime scenes you’re being assigned to. You’re _personally_ involved.”

“Is Hank off the case?”

“No—”

“He’s personally involved, too,” Connor says quickly, wishing he had something to slam down onto the desk to make his words sound as angry as they feel. He can never get his level of frustration right. His voice is always too angry or too soft, never aligning with the feeling in his chest. “Markus and him were friends.”

“It isn’t the same and you know it. He didn’t bring Markus here. He wasn’t in love with Markus. He doesn’t have pictures of Markus all over his desk.”

“There’s two.”

“It doesn’t fucking matter, Connor, you’re off the case. Deal with it. Return your files to the other detectives and move on. Hank dropped the case on his own because he knew he couldn’t do be personally involved. You should have done the same.”

“Being personally involved makes me more likely to solve the case,” he says, knowing how inaccurate his words are. “I’m motivated—”

“You don’t seem it.”

Connor falls quiet.

“You’re on desk duty,” Fowler continues. “You aren’t going near another crime scene until you sort your shit out or the killer is caught. Whichever comes _last_.”

 

 

_Before;_

It’s been exactly a year since Jericho sank. It rains down hard, flooding the streets in ice cold water leaving it nearly devoid of people. They walk hand in hand, though. He looks over to Markus, who stares straight ahead, head tilted slightly to the side.

Connor wants to ask what he’s thinking, but he’s afraid of the answer.

A year ago, he had a gun held to his head. A year ago, he would have killed Markus.

Now it is so unthinkable he cannot imagine it. If he lost Markus now, he would break.

“Don’t overthink things so much,” Markus whispers, barely audible over the sound of the rain.

Connor glances down at their hands as if remembering for the first time their palms are connected. It happens so often, this passing back and forth of their feelings for each other, that sometimes it happens without him realizing it.

“I’m sorry,” he replies.

“Don’t be,” Markus says, and he pulls Connor a little closer to him, breaks their connection so he can wrap his arm around Connor’s shoulder. “We’ve come a long way.”

That they have.

He bites back all of the things he wants to say, all of the questions he wants to ask Markus, and instead he presses them down, hopes that someday this guilt will fade away or he will at least do enough good in the world that he can make up for it.

Is there anyway to make up for murder?

 

 

_After – Markus;_

He waits until North leaves, but he doesn’t exactly know why. Markus trusts her, he likes her, they’re good friends, but something about the things he needs to ask about he doesn’t really want her opinion on.

At around five in the afternoon she stands up, stretches out, grabs her bag, and says her goodbyes. She’s got a date with a girl that used to work as a receptionist at Stratford Tower. Markus wishes her luck a beat after Josh does, and then he races over to the desk where Josh sits at, slides into the chair and folds his hands together.

“I need to ask you a favor,” he says fast, like he’s going to run out of time.

Josh looks up at him, almost skeptically.

“What exactly is the favor?”

“I’ve gone through some of the files,” Markus says. “I know that we help connect androids with all types of resources, whether it be help fixing biocomponents or getting a job. I’m… interested in finding someone help for dealing with their past, when they were a machine.”

“ _Someone_ ,” Josh says, a small smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “You mean Connor.”

“Yes.”

“We have dozens of therapists in the system that work with androids,” he says. “I don’t know if any of them will be any help.”

“Why?”

“Connor is different than other androids,” Josh replies. “He wasn’t a teacher. He didn’t work at the Eden Club. His purpose was to capture deviants, kill if necessary. That’s… a completely different realm of therapy. I don’t know if anyone in the world would be equipped to help him with that.”

“Plenty of androids killed humans after they became deviant,” Markus says. “Is that not similar?”

“Markus—”

“Connor needs help,” he presses. “He has nightmares. He doesn’t talk to me.”

“I know.”

“You know?”

“You think this is the first time you’ve come to me about this?” Josh asks, raising an eyebrow. “I mean, I thought maybe he was getting better since you never asked me again, but… A year and a half ago I gave you a list. A very short list. You never talked about it again.”

“Give me the list again. Or a new one. I don’t care.”

“Markus,” Josh says his name slowly. “It’s different. Androids killing humans? It’s almost always in self defense. Connor killed other androids because it was in his programming. Haven’t you considered that maybe—”

“Give me the list,” Markus says.

Josh sighs, leans back and brings his hands up. Something about it seems overtly familiar. The movement he makes as he gives up, gives in to Markus’ request.

He did the same thing last time.

Tried to talk Markus out of it for some reason.

“You and North—why don’t you like him?”

Josh averts his eyes, stops them on a far off place in the room.

“We thought you were going to be with someone else,” Josh replies. “It’s… difficult seeing the shift in… everything.”

_Simon._

Markus pulls back, yanks away from the name like a flame his hand has gotten to close to. He isn’t ready for that door to open. He isn’t ready to deal with any baggage that comes with that.

“It’s been a long time since you asked,” Josh says, leaning forward, fingers typing across his keyboard quickly. “There’s quite a few androids that have joined our network as therapists. They might be of more help than a human.”

“Thank you,” Markus says, hopes Josh can hear how much he means it in his voice.

 

 

_After – Connor;_

Maybe going the rest of his life without ever seeing Detective Gavin Reed’s face ever again would be a good thing—it could be the distance he needs to deal with whatever _they_ were, but when Connor spots him at his desk, feet kicked up and fingers tapping away on his phone, he is well aware that their relationship might be fractured and broken but it is not able to be ignored.

Connor steps over to his desk, pushes his feet off the edge with his hands and nods his head towards the bathrooms.

It is the exact same motion he had made before. An expression that would never outright say _I want you_ but wouldn’t be able to be misunderstood.

Gavin looks up from his phone, raises his eyebrows slightly, but the sly smile he had last time doesn’t come.

“I want to talk,” Connor says, feeling the sudden need to clarify.

“We can’t talk here?” he asks.

“No.”

Gavin lets out a short laugh, stands and follows him down the hallway, ducking into the empty interrogation room. Connor walks in after him, closes the door and glances over to the two-way mirror, hopes no one is in there watching them.

“Did you tell Fowler that I brought Markus here?” he asks, not wanting to waste time. “Were you—”

“I wasn’t jealous,” Gavin says, but anybody could hear how false those words are. “And I didn’t tell him. Someone else ratted on you. Why? You get kicked off your precious case?”

Connor doesn’t reply to him. He can’t do anything but stare at him, try to decipher every meaning behind every shift of his expression, every fraction of a movement in his body. It’s difficult with the way he’s turned, the way he refuses to meet Connor’s eyes.

“I don’t believe you.”

Gavin looks towards him, head back, face twisted in anger.

“I don’t really care if you do or not.”

“You’re lying,” Connor says. “You are continuously lying.”

“I’m not lying about _this,”_ Gavin says, pushing Connor backwards against the wall. “I didn’t tell on you. I’m not a fucking five year old.”

“So, you _were_ jealous?”

Gavin scoffs and Connor winces at his own words.

Why does he constantly need this—this clarification, this re-enforcement that Gavin cares about him? Why is he constantly testing him, always wanting to know for sure after already knowing for absolute certain that Gavin is in love with him?

Because everything is so conflicting.

“I don’t love you, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Gavin says. “And even if I was, I couldn’t care less if you date some mindless robot and even if I did—I wouldn’t get you fired because of it.”

“I was kicked off the case,” Connor says. “I wasn’t fired.”

“One step away from it,” Gavin says, shrugging. “You’ve been shit at your job ever since you became a deviant.”

Connor flinches, leans his head back against the wall.

“Have you ever thought—” he stops himself, clears his throat and starts again. “Have you ever thought about being honest when it isn’t utilized to hurt people?”

“Sorry,” he sneers. “I had bad teachers growing up. You want me to spill all the details about my every thoughts?”

“I just want you to admit—”

“Admit what?” Gavin asks. “That I fucked up my entire life? That I fuck up everything? That I fucked up _us?”_

They are both silent for a moment, Connor’s insides twisting, something inside of him fighting to think of something else, to end this conversation.

_Markus._

The person he actually loves. The one that actually loves him. The one that is in his apartment fighting _for_ him.

Not the one fighting him.

Why is he here? Why did he start this? Why is pushing this?

“Yes,” Connor finally breathes out.

“Fine!” Gavin says, stepping away. “I thought then—It doesn’t matter. I regret everything. I’m in a constant state of regret. I wish I didn’t treat you the way I did because then maybe—”

“We’d be something?”

“Yeah.”

Connor wishes that things were different.

This has been on a continuous loop in his brain for the last two years.

He wishes things were different on every possible level with every person he has met.

“Why’d you kill me?”

“Humans are complicated beings,” Gavin replies, his voice quiet. “I thought maybe putting a bullet in your brain would… I don’t know. Metaphorically kill anything off I might… It doesn’t matter. I knew you were going to come back. I’d seen it enough times. It didn’t—It didn’t really seem like it mattered. It’d be like killing you in a video game.”

_It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter._

But it _matters._

“Inconsequential.”

“Inconsequential,” Gavin replies, a small smile. It is so sad though, so absolutely heart breaking to see, that Connor has to close his eyes to keep from looking at it any longer. “You should count yourself lucky anyways—that nothing happened between us.”

“Why?”

He hears Gavin’s feet move, shifting closer to him. When he opens his eyes, Gavin is reaching up, dragging his thumb across Connor’s lip like he had done before.

“Because I would have ruined you just like I ruin everything.”

“And if I was already ruined?” Connor asks.

“I’d fucking destroy you.”

Connor reaches up, grasps Gavin’s hand in his, leaves a soft brush of his lips against his knuckles, notices the bruises and the scars and the new wounds there. Gavin’s been in a lot of fights, one of them quite recent.

“Have you ever considered the possibility that I could have helped you?”

“No one can help me,” Gavin says, pulling his hand away. “They’ve tried and failed. Everyone gives up in the end.”

“I wouldn’t have.”

“Well, it doesn’t really fucking matter, does it?” he says, stepping over to the door. “You’re with Markus. You’ll always be with Markus. He died and you’re still with him.”

Gavin presses his hand against the pad beside the door, waits as it slides open and slips out into the hallway.

Connor leans his head back against the wall again, reaches up a shaking hand to where his LED would be, turns the function on again.

And then collapses to the ground and cries because he needs to. Because he has to. Because Markus was right.

He cannot hold it in.

 

 

_After – Markus;_

“There are two things I would like to talk to you about, and I would like to say them without you interrupting me,” Markus says, standing in front of Connor in the living room, hands behind his back. “And then, when I’m done, you can speak.”

“What—”

“I’d like your silence to start now, please,” he says, he’s aware that his voice almost has a hint of humor to it. He can almost feel his lips forming these words before, with a smile instead. Maybe that’s why it’s so hard to get the edge out of it, even when he’s about to talk about a serious topic. “First—I have been working with North and Josh to recover my memories. I can connect through theirs and pick up fragments of my own. I think when I died—I think when the Markus before me died, he left pieces of code so that maybe I could have pieces of myself again.”

Connor opens his mouth to say something, then shuts it again.

“I think you can help me,” Markus continues, a pleased smile on his face at Connor’s restraint. He’s a quiet boy, but when he wants to interject something into a conversation, he usually does it. “I want you to show me memories of your life with him.”

He watches Connor bites his lip, averts his gaze. Is he holding back an argument, a string of _no no no?_

“Secondly,” he says, stepping forward. “I know you think you’re taking advantage of me by giving me your emotions. It’s… understandable. But if you don’t talk to me about it, you need to talk to someone else. Jericho has a network of hundreds of people across the Detroit area that help androids. There’s six people close by that help deviants deal with the things they’ve done. So… I want you to speak to them, hire one of them. They’re all androids. They aren’t going to tell you to delete your memories. They understand how important they are.”

Connor is silent for a long time, shifting slightly on the couch in his discomfort.

“Is that it?”

“Yes,” Markus says. “You can speak now.”

“Okay.”

The room goes dead.

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Okay to what?”

“Okay to everything,” Connor says, looking up to him. “I’ll… try.”

Markus smiles, leans down in front of Connor, grabs his face in his hands and tilts it up, forgetting that he should gauge Connor’s reaction and in his happiness they are already kissing. He can feel Connor’s hands come up, touch his neck softly before drawing him downwards.

 

 

_After – Connor;_

They lay on the bed, side by side, hands clasped between them. It’s the extra bed in the apartment, the one he bought to fill the space when he knew he would end up needing a roommate to pay the rent, the one he got in case Hank ever needed to stay over, in case he ended up with friends who would stay the night. The one that was never supposed to turn into _Markus’_ bed because they were always supposed to share the giant one in his bedroom, the one that took up too much space, the one that he kept made but always ended up in tangled sheets at night when they were both home, ready to shed their day like a snake sheds its skin.

He shows Markus bits and pieces at first. The highlights of their relationships. His favorite moments.

Connor has already shown Markus some of them on that stupid night he was caught crying in his bedroom, too distraught to hold back the memories he wanted to see again. He shows the first time they kissed again, the first time they slept together, and he shows Markus more.

New Years when they had a peaceful moment together, filled with so much love that not a single other thought could take them away—even surrounded by dozens of other people. The Christmas just before that when he knew that him and Markus were _good_ and _perfect,_ when he knew that neither of them would have to worry about the other straying, when he was certain they would stay together forever.

He shows Markus all the times that he has been distracted from organizing a bookshelf, sends him all of the happiness and the love despite his desperate need to get the books under control. He shows him the time Markus first tells Connor that he loves him, and then the first time he actually heard Markus say it, all the times they whispered it to each other thinking the other wouldn’t hear it.

It takes up more time than he realizes. Each memory he plays to Markus slowly, lets him experience it in real time so that it might spark something a little better. After a few hours, Connor has to pull away, bring himself back into the jarring reality of present time.

Markus relays all the things he remembers, sits with a frown on his face when he can’t recall the specific time that Connor was trying to turn the bookshelves into being divided by what they thought of them (the worst on the bottom, the best on the top).

“It isn’t that big of a deal,” Connor whispers. “All you did was kiss me.”

Markus laughs, because even if it wasn’t a profound time in their relationship, what they did was a lot more than kissing.

“I think we make people sick,” Markus murmurs back after a while. “We’re overly affectionate.”

_We._

“You’ve said that before.”

“I know,” Markus says quietly. “I can—I can remember it.”

“You’re remembering things on your own?” Connor asks, sitting up.

“Not… anything specific. Just… things I’ve said. Or… done. Movements I remember making before.”

Connor leans across the space between them, carefully rests his hand on Markus chest, just off to the side of the Thirium regulator, “You’re lying.”

Markus sighs, looks over to him in the dark, “How can you tell?”

“I was built with the function of lie detector,” he replies. “It’s hard to switch off sometimes. Especially if I know the person.”

He sees the movement of Markus’ mouth in the dark, smiling up at him, “I remember… walking with you to Jericho once. And I remember…”

“What?”

“I remember finding a ring.”

Connor freezes, every inch of his body stopping as if he’s died and the biocomponents in him have stopped trying to make him look human.

“Did you ever propose?”

He doesn’t want to answer, so he refuses to. Connor pulls away, laying on his back and looking up at the ceiling.

“I’m sorry,” Markus whispers, and it is his turn to bend over him, to press a gentle hand against his cheek. “I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s fine,” Connor lies. “I just… didn’t think you knew.”

“I kept it secret pretty good?”

“I mean—” Connor shrugs. “You’re bad at lying, but you’re… good at distracting me.”

“Can I distract you now?” Markus whispers.

Connor looks over to him, sees the smile on his face. It is the same mischievous one Markus wears when he wants to cause trouble.

Trouble always, always, _always_ being the same thing.

But he doesn’t know if he could get Gavin out of his mind if they did anything. Just like he snuck in when they kissed. It is hard not to draw comparisons between the only two people Connor has ever kissed or slept with in moments like these.

Or rather, not comparisons.

Just remembering.

Connor reaches up, drags his thumb across Markus’ lips, knows it is the same action that Gavin did to him, wonders if Gavin’s thoughts were as confused and twisted as his right now.

“It’d technically be your first time,” Connor says quietly. “Are you sure you would want it to be with me?”

“Why would I want it to be with anyone else?”

His heart is beating so loud he is sure Markus can hear it.

“What if I ruin you?”

Like Gavin would ruin him, like he joked that Markus ruined him, like he knows he already ruined Markus once before.

“You can’t ruin me,” Markus whispers.

They collide into each other. He doesn’t know how much time passes between Markus’ words and when Connor reaches up, pulls him downwards, but they have their lips pressed together, hands working quickly at each others’ clothes.

Does Markus feel like it has been as long as Connor knows it has been? Does it not feel like any time has passed? Does it feel like time had somehow stood still, stretched for far longer than a few months?

He never thought he would do this again. He never thought he would feel Markus’ hands on his torso or the familiar scent so close to him. He never thought he would feel the flutter of butterflies in his stomach, the trail of heat across his skin, the _need_ for Markus and getting the fulfillment of it.

It is easier than Connor thought to push Gavin from his mind. This is different. This is completely different. This is why he chose Gavin in the first place.

Because Markus is soft and gentle, even in the rush to get naked, even in the urgency of their kisses. Because Gavin was rough, biting down on his shoulder or tightening a hand around his throat, ripping clothes without a care in the world about how Connor would get home with a shredded shirt and a stolen pair of jeans.

Markus pulls away from him, hands moving to bring up his shirt, tossing it towards the side and leaning back down again when Connor’s hand comes outwards, plants against Markus’ torso and stops him from getting any closer.

“Your scars,” Connor whispers, knowing where they should be. Knowing that there should be a healed gash against his right side, a circle scar on his chest. “They’re gone.”

Maybe he should have expected this. They fixed his eyes. Why wouldn’t they shave away the unevenness of the plastic where it had been melted back together wrong? Every biocomponent in Markus’ body could be an entirely different one than the ones he had before he died.

Markus pauses, looks down at Connor’s hand back up to his eyes, “What are you taking about?”

Connor moves, drags the pads of his fingers as lightly as he can where the scar on his waist would be.

This could be a different body entirely. This could be another RK200 model, sent out by Kamski or CyberLife or whoever to fuck with him. To retrieve data on how an android would deal with the loss of a loved one that would haunt him like a ghost. He can imagine the files, imagine all the interesting articles being released into the wild.

But Connor knows it isn’t a new Markus because their hands have connected, because he has felt Markus’ _soul_ mix with his own so often that he would know if it was different.

“Connor?”

He sits up, moves his hand from Markus’ side upwards in delicate movements, stops where every scar should be, feels the smooth plastic, stares at the skin where it lays together perfectly, the only imperfections on him being the moles and the freckles programmed to make him more realistic, more easy on the minds and the eyes of humans.

“It’s… like…” he trails off, pressing his hand flat against Markus’ heart. “I could pretend that we met before everything happened.”

Markus tilts his head, reaches his hand up to lay over Connor’s, “Is that what you would have wanted?”

“No,” Connor says quickly, the urge to pull his hand away only dissuaded by Markus’ on hi keeping it there. The warmth of it, them touching without having to send across emotion. “I just… think about us. Other versions of us. What we’re doing. If I… if I killed you. If we were human. If we’re happy.”

“Why?” Markus whispers.

“I thought once,” he swallows, looks up at Markus’ eyes. “That we were so happy we must be incredibly unhappy everywhere else to balance it out. And now we’re so… unhappy that—”

“I don’t think the universe works that way,” Markus says, his thumb moving in a lazy swipe over the back of Connor’s hand. “Things happen. There is no god punishing us for being excessively happy by tormenting us with this. The only person to blame is that killer.”

Connor lets out a breath of air, doesn’t even know what he should say.

“I love you,” Markus answers for him, ducking down towards Connor. “And I think we can be happy again and I think we shouldn’t have to worry what another version of us is doing. We are the ones that matter, aren’t we?”

He moves so that he can thread his fingers through Markus’, so that he can close the gap between them. His heart aches a little at the words, how easily they have tossed aside the thoughts that have been sitting in his head.

They might come back. They might come back tomorrow morning when he wakes up or in a few days or months from now. But they have brushed away some of the worry inside of his chest.

When he breaks the kiss, he says as quietly as he possibly can, foreheads pressed together and eyes shut tight, “I think I might love you.”

Markus hesitates for a moment before his other hand comes up, tips Connor’s chin back so their mouths can meet again. Their hands break apart, move so that they can get rid of the last pieces of fabric separating them.

Connor pulls him downwards until they can lay flat against each other, until there is nothing but their skin touching, their mouths pressed together. He could stay like this forever. He wants to stay like this forever.

 

 

_Before;_

“Are you ready?” Markus calls from the other side of the door.

Connor pulls at the sleeves of his sweater, a soft blue one that Markus gave to him for what they call his _birthday,_ even though neither of them really like the term for it, but it is much simpler than saying _the day he was activated,_ which can be a little more confusing.

Because he knows when the -51 version of him was activated, and he knows when -56 died and this -57 woke up, which doesn’t work as nicely. November 9th is simply not the day either of them want to celebrate something. Save, for the fact, they met.

But even then, it’s hard to celebrate something when Connor had a gun pointed at Markus nearly the entire time.

“Almost,” Connor yells back through the door. He shoves the dresser drawer closed, opens the door and steps out like a girl in a teen movie on her prom night.

“Wow,” Markus says, apparently on the same train of thought as him, mimicking the boy’s gasp and cheesy inflection perfectly. “You look amazing.”

“Stop,” he says, swatting lightly at his arm.

“Why did you need to be in there alone?” Markus asks, reaching forward to the fabric of Connor’s sweater, pulling him towards his body. “You afraid I was going to do something the second I saw a sliver of skin?”

Connor leans forward, leaves a kiss on his jaw. A safe placement for it so they don’t get too distracted.

“Like you wouldn’t,” he whispers against the skin there.

“Like _you_ wouldn’t,” Markus repeats back. “You’re not so innocent.”

“Marginally more so,” Connor answers.

Markus laughs, lifts his head far enough away to place an equally safe kiss against his forehead but it is dissolving the want for Connor to leave. Not many nights they get to go out on dates. If they stay like this a second longer all Connor will want to do is stand here forever in the comfort of his arms.

So he pulls away, pushes Markus lightly towards the door.

“Let’s go,” he says. “The movie is going to start soon and the trailers are always the best part.”

“I’m glad we paid twelve dollars a ticket for you to enjoy the trailers you can watch online more than the actual movie itself,” Markus replies, grabbing Connor’s coat from the rack before even asking him, handing it over to him. It would be too hot for a human to wear it, but Connor likes the feeling of layers. It’s comforting.

Sometimes, he also just likes the act of Markus pulling it off, grumbling in his ear about how he wears too many, makes it too difficult. It’s amusing for him to see Markus as needy as he is.

“It’s not the same experience,” Connor replies, tugging the sleeves on.

Markus glances back towards him, gives him a smile before they leave. It’s not like the topic of money is something that is stressful in their relationship. They don’t need to use it to buy food. It goes primarily towards the books on their shelves and Markus’ paint supplies.

And the ring hidden underneath Markus’ bed that he wishes he had an excuse to go grab without seeming suspicious.

And the house that Markus wants, that Connor wants now, too. Big, with a hundred rooms to fill with a hundred kids.

Connor’s feet cross the threshold, pull the door behind him. When he gets back, he’s going to find a way into the room while Markus sleeps, he’s going to reach back and grab that box, he is going to propose the next morning.

It is a perfect moment, one so average and ordinary that makes it all the better.

How could he know in three hours he would be trying to hold Markus’ together while sirens wail on the street?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing / Editing music;  
> Save Yourself - Kaleo  
> Here With Me - Susie Suh x Robot Koch (for real if you haven't listened to this song... it's like the exact atmosphere I've been trying to write for this and I was so pleasantly surprised to happen across it while writing this)  
> Seventeen - Matthew and the Atlas


	10. ten times over

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Gabriel, what would you do if Nathan was held by Mercury? If you had to cut Pilot to find him and try to rescue him? I think you’d skin her alive."  
> “Ten times over.” -- Half Wild / Sally Green

_Before;_

They are walking back from the movie theater, talking about the characters, the plot, the cinematography. Or rather, Connor listens to Markus as he explains in great detail how pretty one scene of the movie is, the way the colors of the sky, the ground, the clothing represented a turning point in the villain’s thoughts. Connor could reply to this, could talk in his own way about how he thought it was expertly done, how it was well written, but he can’t bring himself to interrupt Markus. He could listen to him describe the specific shade of blue and gold and green for hours, if not to listen to Markus talk about something he loves, than just to listen to his voice.

Markus stops in his tracks and Connor turns, a few steps ahead, and looks back towards him.

“Are you listening to me?” he asks, tilting his head to the side.

“You said the green was a great way to reflect his new connection to nature,” Connor replies, taking a step back towards him. “You think I would tune you out?”

“I’ve been rambling about this for twenty minutes.”

“Nineteen.”

“Oh,” he says. “That makes it much better.”

Connor closes the gap, reaches upwards and pulls Markus down so he can kiss him. He could propose without the ring this very second, but there is something about having it in his hands that makes it more real, makes it so Markus won’t think he’s joking about this, won’t bring with it an awkward conversation of Connor saying _no, I’m serious._

But he knows when Markus wraps his arms around his waist, tugs him closer against his chest, that he won’t wait until morning. If he has to reach under that bed and grab the ring with Markus in the doorway watching him, he will.

 

 

_After – Connor;_

They lay naked and tangled in the sheets, cool air floating down from the vent above them. It makes him move a little closer to Markus’ side, to feel the warmth of his body on every inch of him that he can.

Markus pulls his hand upwards, presses gentle kisses along his fingers, across his knuckles, careful against his wrist, up his arm—

“Stop,” Connor whispers, a small smile on his face, his stomach twisting in a hundred butterflies. “If you don’t give us a break neither of us are going to be able to do anything tomorrow.”

“Not even stand?”

Connor rolls his eyes, buries his head against Markus’ shoulder. Markus is partially right, though. If he tried to stand up, his legs would probably give out from underneath him. He is entirely exhausted, too many hours spent with the two of them doing nothing but kissing every inch of the other, leaving gentle touches, exploring each other like they have never seen one another before.

And, he supposes, it is partially true. There is difference between Markus remembering their first time together from someone else and actually experiencing it.

And his body is different, his personality has shifted slightly. He is not the same Markus that Connor slept with before.

And he isn’t used to this either. When he was with Gavin they did not spend hours together. He doesn’t recover the same way an android does. It’s been so long since he has spent a night like this his body isn’t used to it.

Markus pulls away from him, leaves Connor’s arm to lay across his chest.

“Okay,” he says quietly. “I’ll let us be able to function tomorrow.”

And he’s getting out of the bed, reaching down towards the floor where their clothes lay.

“Where are you going?” Connor asks, sitting up.

“If I stay in here I’m not going to be able to stop,” he says. “What is it that you said? I’m the responsible one?”

“You have terrible self-restraint,” he replies, ignoring the last half of his comment. It hurts a little too much to think of the times he has said it to Markus. _His_ Markus.

Although, this one, this Markus a few feet away from him, is his now too, he supposes.

“So do you,” Markus says, looking back at him. “If I recall correctly, you’re the one that started round two. And three. And four.”

Connor can feel his face heat up, is thankful for the dark of the room, of Markus’ focus switching back to pulling his clothes on.

“That’s mine,” Connor says as Markus pulls on a sweater.

“You’ll get over it,” Markus says, standing and turning towards him. “I’m sure it was mine before it was yours anyways.”

He smiles, hides his face in the pillow, because Markus is right.

 

 

_After – Markus;_

He falls down onto the couch, pulls a knitted blanket from over the edge and wraps it around himself despite the temperature of the room already being a little high and his insides burning. Markus can’t keep himself from smiling, struggles to keep himself from getting up and going back to Connor.

This feels _right._ This feels like how they _should_ be. How they _were._

He only hopes it is not as fragile as it seems.

 

 

_[ One ]_

He watches him through the window of the car, sees the way his head is tipped down, the way his chest is heaving as he tries to hold in the tears. It is the image that will come back to him every night, the pain that has taken him over, the one that will not leave, no matter how much time is given for it to pass.

 

_Before;_

Markus is moving in front of him before he can do anything about it, stepping backwards so that Connor is pressed against the wall without enough room to do anything about it. He can’t help but feel he should be the one standing in front of Markus, the one forcing him backwards so that he can’t try and stand in front of him.

He wants to protect him, he wants to stop him, he wants to be the one that has the gun aimed at him but he can’t move.

“Markus,” he whispers, hoping he can convey this, hoping he can get it across without saying the words.

The one that should die should not be the one that is of importance to the world.

_After – Connor;_

“Shouldn’t you be leaving for work?” Markus asks.

Connor leans against the doorway, keeping a safe distance between them. If he gets any closer he won’t be able to trust his hands and right now he needs to keep his head clear. Markus is like a drug to him, turns him into someone else entirely.

“They kicked me off the case,” Connor replies, his fingers tapping against the wood. “Technically I don’t have to go in at all.”

“But you should.”

“I should,” he shrugs. “Or I could just stay home.”

“After kicking me out last night?’ Markus asks, standing up from the couch and walking towards him. A dangerous action. Connor should take a step back, be ready to close the door, but instead his fingers still, his head tilts a little to the side. He can feel a lazy smile coming up onto his face.

“You still have a job, too,” he says.

Markus is too close now, his hands are on the buttons of his shirt, the one he stole from the closet that Markus never wears, undoing the top one.

“They won’t miss me.”

Connor reaches up, stills his fingers.

“They would.”

His fingers move, brushing off Connor’s grip, undoing the next one.

“I guess we’ll see, won’t we?”

Markus’ hands continue their work, pause at where the shirt is tucked into pants.

“I went through all the effort of getting ready,” Connor says, his voice quiet.

Fingers wrap around his belt loops, pull him a little closer.

“Then why’d you say you would take the day off?”

Connor’s head tips back as a kiss is pressed against his throat.

There is a response somewhere in Connor’s head but it is lost. Somewhere it sits in the back of his mind, muffled by the softness of Markus’ lips, the movement of his hands, the warmth of his body pressed so close to his own.

He tries to hold back a noise but it escapes anyways and Markus moves a little quicker, their clothes coming off and their lips crashing together. Markus lifts him up, presses him against a wall and Connor’s arms wrap around his neck, his legs wrap around his waist as Markus pushes into him.

Markus’ lips leave him at an inopportune time, pressing against his jaw slightly to the left of where Connor would leave a kiss on him. Connor doesn’t have enough time to bite his lips, to hold back the whine and it comes out louder than he wants it too, can feel the way Markus’ lips curve into a smile against his skin.

“Shut up,” Connor whispers as a laugh is breathed against him. He digs his nails against the back of his neck, bites down on his tongue, tries to burry his face into the crook of Markus’ neck.

“I like it,” Markus says.

“Shut up,” Connor repeats.

Markus slows his speed, pulls his head away enough to catch Connor’s lips in his. He wonders if he can taste the drop of Thirium from the cut he’s made. When he moves away, it is barely enough space for him to talk. Connor can feel the movement of his lips against his.

“You’re always holding back,” he says. “Why are you always so embarrassed?”

“I’m not,” Connor says and he leans in far enough forward that they can kiss again, so that he doesn’t have to explain how humiliating it is for him.

He’s a detective. He was created to solve crimes. He is, somehow, programmed to be reduced to a quivering mess whenever there are hands on him. His sensitivity to it all is so high that he cums nearly twice as many times as Markus does.

It’s ridiculous.

He wants to send a complaint to Kamski about it because he knows it was probably part of some cruel joke.

Markus hands on his sides brush upwards, hold him a little tighter. His cock hits the wrong spot inside of him and Connor moans against his mouth, has to break away to breath a little bit. His face is flushed, he can feel himself too close to the edge.

“Markus, please,” he whispers, begs, _needs._

One of the hands on his waist disappears, wraps around his length pressed between their stomachs and strokes him too slowly. He wants to whine that it isn’t enough but it’s _too_ much instead and he is shuddering against Markus, too caught up in it to stop the same noise from leaving him again.

Markus waits a second, holding him still against the wall before pulling out of him, flipping him so that he can carry Connor over to the bed and lay him down. His hands go up to his face, shielding himself from Markus’ gaze.

Two years and he still doesn’t want Markus to see how undone he can get from this.

“Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” he says, his voice distant.

His arms are pried away, soft kisses pressed to each cheek. His legs are pulled apart and Markus is inside of him again and his hands clutch the blankets, trying to hold onto something, anything.

 

 

_After – Markus;_

He doesn’t want to drop Connor off at the precinct, but he does anyways. If they hadn’t answered the phone, they could still be in bed together. He cannot get over how easy it is for Connor to become so needy. It is a wonder how they ever did anything else. There is something captivating about the way Connor’s mouth will fall open when he can’t hold back a moan and the way it tastes when their lips are pressed together, when he trembles against him.

Markus shouldn’t be thinking about this while he’s trying to drive. He has to force his focus, his thoughts on other things. For one, the rain that covers his windshield. For two, the other drivers. For three, the people crossing the street with vibrant umbrellas.

He breathes in, breathes out, keeps the repetitive motion in his head.

 

“How did your list work out?” Josh asks.

Markus glances over to him, then over his other shoulder where North leans against a wall, her voice low as she talks to someone with a small smile on her face. The date must have gone good.

“He’s going to meet them all throughout the next few months,” Markus replies, turning back to the files he’s trying to sort. “I’m… Should I be talking to you about this?”

“What exactly is ‘this’?” he asks. “You mean Connor or do you mean his problems?”

“I mean Connor,” Markus says, his attention lost from his task completely now. “You said you and North—you thought I was going to be with someone else.”

“That doesn’t mean you aren’t allowed to talk about him. He was your boyfriend. He’s your roommate.”

“I think he’s my boyfriend again,” Markus says quietly.

“You _think_?” the chair next to him swivels, the wheels roll quietly as Josh sits down beside him. “What do you mean you _think_? Did you kiss?”

“A lot more than that,” Markus mumbles, feeling almost guilty about it.

He feels a hand hit his shoulder as Josh rolls his chair closer to him, “You sound like a teenage boy. What exactly happened?”

“I think those details might be a bit too vulgar to repeat.”

“Gross. You know what I meant.”

Markus laughs and it feels nice to laugh, to be happy. There is nothing in his life pulling him down now.

Unless he focuses on the fact the guy that murdered him is still on the loose, but he prefers to look on the brighter side of things. Connor is living in the apartment again. They are sharing a bed. Connor is going to go to therapy, or at least will meet with a few therapists.

They had sex for nearly five hours straight, and he can feel his face warm at the fact.

“I asked him to stay. He said yes. I told him I loved him. He told me he thinks he might love me. We—”

“I know,” Josh says, rolling away from him again. “I don’t want to hear about that part. I heard enough about it before. _Saw_ enough of it before.”

“We—here?”

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “Jericho. Original Jericho.”

“With Connor?”

Josh falls silent.

No.

Not with Connor.

“Simon?” he asks, his voice quiet.

“Yeah,” Josh replies, his voice equally as small. “Simon.”

 

 

_[ Two ]_

The pictures of the crime scene are put up on boards now that it has shifted from Connor’s desk to the other detectives. They no longer have to hide the splatter of blood across the walls, on the floors. Cameras catching every little drop of Thirium before it evaporates completely. But it’s the pictures of Markus’ broken body, laying lifeless on the ground, that makes his fists curl at his side.

 

_Before;_

Markus slumps back against him, he can hear the sound of feet running. He feels like everything has gone black. He can’t see, he can only feel Markus’ body against him and his hands trying to hold onto him, but both of their legs are giving out, both of them are collapsing against the ground and Markus is trying to say something, to speak.

Connor isn’t here right now. He’s somewhere else entirely. He can’t breathe. He can’t think. He is lost in a void of nothingness.

And then a choked groan brings him back and his hands are pressed over Markus’ wound as best as he can when he’s being crushed by the weight of him.

There are a hundred things Connor could be saying right now. A hundred things he could say to reassure Markus, to help him, but all he can do is press his hands down and feel the Thirium leak out between them.

He is entirely, utterly, speechless.

 

 

_After – Connor;_

He watches them from across the room, not even trying to pretend that he is listening to Hank’s words. Gavin has a smile on his face, a tilt of his head. If Connor was closer, he might be able to make out the exact expression he is making, the nuanced details that would tell him if his smile is annoyed or not, if the tilt of his head is in genuine interest or complete lack of it.

And the RK900 staring back at him, blank, with eyebrows slightly raised. It’s an expression Connor has made before, the same one he made when he met Hank in the bar.

He never learned the android’s name because it felt wrong to know what it was. They’re too close, look too similar. Connor doesn’t like it. It unnerves him. He cannot imagine being North or Josh or Simon and being able to see his own face wherever he turns. He cannot even imagine what it would be like to have a sister or a brother that would share too many of his features, let alone a twin.

If that’s what he should called the RK900.

“Are you listening to me?”

“No,” Connor says before he can pretend otherwise and sort through his files and come up with snippets of what Hank was actually talking about.

He can hear Hank protesting, saying something annoyed but he’s already standing and making his way to the breakroom, carefully passing by Gavin so they don’t have to meet each other’s eyes.

“Hello, Connor,” the RK900 says, clearing the table Gavin was leaned against of its trash. Gavin has no desire to keep anything clean. His apartment. His desk. His mouth. A stupid table in a breakroom.

“Stay away from him,” Connor says, pulling the empty coffee cup from his hand.

“Who?” he asks, tilting his head to the side.

He knows they designed the RK900 to look like him with enough differences that they aren’t identical, almost imperceptible differences that at first glance they look exactly the same. Connor’s eyes are barely bigger, carries a trace of innocence that doesn’t transfer over to the RK900. He’s a few inches shorter, dressed with a more casual uniform, even if he no longer wears over half the pieces of it.

“Detective Reed.”

“Oh?” he asks, a small smile blooming across his face. “Why?”

Why? _Why?_

Because that’s his face on the RK900. Because Gavin would be using him the same way Connor fears he is using Markus. Because it wouldn’t be right.

Because he doesn’t want anyone else to be with Gavin, as selfish as that sounds.

“Just stay away from him.”

“You are aware he’s human, yes?” the RK900 asks. “If you want to be with him, you shouldn’t try to come up with silly excuses. He’s going to die. Be with him while you can.”

He wishes he carried the same attitude as Hank or Gavin and could tell him to fuck off and mind his own damn business but the words wouldn’t form right on his tongue so instead he turns and slams the cup into the trash can and stomps back over to his desk. When he glances over his shoulder, Gavin is watching him closely.

And he feels guilty for how right the RK900 is.

 

 

_After – Markus;_

“Tell me about him,” Markus says. “Please.”

“No.”

“That’s it? That’s your argument?” he asks, kicking at Josh’s chair until he can hook his foot around the metal and pull him back over. “Just _no_?”

“Listen,” he says, standing up awkwardly to get away from Markus. “You have no idea what went down with you—with the Markus before, whatever—and Simon. It wasn’t good. It didn’t go over well. It messed you up pretty bad. I’m not going to see you go through that again. Especially when things with you and Connor are good, alright? So let it go.”

“He’s part of who I was,” Markus says. “If I pretend I didn’t know him I’m going to be denying a piece of myself.”

“Maybe it’s for the best.”

“Forgetting who you are is never for the best, Josh,” he says. “You should know that.”

“I do. I also know—”

“I can ask North.”

“You think North is going to let you anymore than I am?” he asks. “She’s far more protective of you and Simon than I am. She’d probably kill you before she let you revert back into who you were then.”

“You’re lying,” he says, hoping that he has the same effect Connor does when he says the words—the ability to say them and someone to spill out the truth once they’re caught.

“Fine, go ahead,” Josh replies. “See how happy she is to share that with you again. You realize you’re making us relive everything, you know that right? It’s not any easier for us than it is for you.”

Markus opens and closes his mouth.

He hadn’t thought of it that way. Of course he knew that they had to actively be a part of the memory, had to relive it themselves, but wound up in his own emotions he hadn’t considered what it could do to them. How it could shred whatever tattered remains of themselves they have put together.

It is selfish.

But there are things he has to know. Parts of him that he has to keep. He understands how Connor feels now. The absolute need to hold onto these fragments despite the fact they have the power to destroy him. They have all culminated into who he was and he needs them to be that Markus again.

It is selfish.

Intensely so.

 

 

_[ Three ]_

Markus was not the first. He was not the last. Three before and three after like some kind of fucked up symmetry before they catch him, put him in a chair, question him for hours. He does not give himself away, even though they know it’s him. His hand writing even matches the messages drawn on the walls. He wants to break through the glass and slam his head against the table. He struggles to restrain himself.

 

_Before;_

Hank has to pull him off the ground, has to pry his hands away from Markus’ body so they can take pictures. He stands somewhere caught in a daze of not allowing anything to sink into his head and screaming, fighting against the arms are around him.

Gavin, to his left. Hank, to his right. It takes both of them to keep him back from the crime scene.

 

_After – Connor;_

“They have a lead,” Hank says. “An android was killed last night. An ST300. She was killed outside of a store and security cameras caught the license plates of three cars that would have been there at the time of her murder.”

Connor doesn’t want to hear this. He doesn’t want to hear the details of how someone was killed.

This is his job. It never affected him like this before. How does it not affect Hank or Gavin or anyone else? How are humans already hardened to this terrible world that he was _built_ for?

“They’re bringing all of the owners in and talking to them.”

“I’m glad it took exactly one day for them to do a better job at this than me,” Connor says, pushing away from his desk.

“Connor, you can’t leave.”

“Why?” he asks, turning back to him.

“They’re doing a line up. You need to see if you recognize anyone.”

He lets out a shaking breath, doesn’t want to see the face of Markus’ killer again. He doesn’t want to be taken back to that moment. Not again. _Never_ again.

“Can you do it?”

He has no choice.

“I will,” he says, because _can_ is so subjective.

Physically, yes, he can look at their faces. Physically, yes, he could form the words that would either help or prevent them from putting the guy in jail.

But no, he cannot, emotionally, mentally, be able to look in the eyes of Markus’ murderer. A small, selfish part of him hopes that the face will not be there. It is crushed with guilt immediately.

 

 

_After – Markus;_

“I’m sorry,” he says, he wants to chant it like a prayer, wants both of them to understand how absolutely sorry he is about all of this.

Neither of them say anything. Not even an _it’s fine_ to reassure him. Not a single word. They don’t want to do this and they aren’t going to pretend either.

Markus links his hands with North first. She floods him with the memory of them meeting, unshadowing Simon who is standing in the center, the one to welcome him to Jericho. She shows Markus her watching him from the side as he relayed his plans to steal from a CyberLife Warehouse, of them running through the streets, of Markus following Simon through it all, something he hadn’t seen before.

He can feel a fracture form in his heart—maybe something that had already been there, only made worse now. It breaks, spiraling upwards, outwards, inwards. Each memory he sees is throwing him backwards further and further.

And he doesn’t need the memory of North catching them kissing in the shadows. He doesn’t need it because everything is slipping out of his grasp. He is a rock being thrown out into the ocean, skipping across the surface before slipping under.

He is drowning.

Markus is holding a gun in his hand, handing it out to Simon in the hopes he will come back. He is holding Simon’s hand, pulling him close and hoping that Simon will change his mind about going to Stratford Tower with him, like even then Markus knew it would end badly.

His first kiss is with Simon, quiet and soft and then rushed because he shouldn’t allow himself to feel anything when there are more important things at stake. He is shedding his clothes, pretending that this means nothing, is just a distraction, when it is so untrue that even know he regrets the thoughts.

The others he slept with afterwards, after they knew that Simon was dead, are the distractions.

Simon was the person he was supposed to be with. He can feel it in his soul, he can feel his heart aching with the want of him by his side again.

They were in love.

They just wouldn’t admit to it, but he was on the precipice of it. One more moment together and he would have been lost in him with no point of return.

When he pulls away from North, she is crying, standing and running out of the room. Josh is hesitant, holding out his hand but Markus shakes his head. He doesn’t even want to say the words, to tell him _no, you were right._

He knows enough now. The gates that had been locked closed are now open. Josh’s memories are unnecessary.

 

 

_[ Four ]_

“Do you recognize any of them?” Hank asks.

“No,” Connor replies, repeating the same words that he had when they first found him at the crime scene. “It was dark. I didn’t see anything. I wish I did. My focus was elsewhere.”

He wants to reach across the space and grab Connor’s hand, squeeze it in comfort, but he can’t.

 

_Before;_

“They can repair the damage,” Hank says, the one to break the news. “But… they have to reset him.”

He closes his eyes, curls up against himself in the backseat of Hank’s car.

“Do you want me to take you to the hospital?”

_No no no._

_Yes yes yes._

He doesn’t answer because he can’t decide.

Hank turns the keys, the car rolls across the road slowly. He doesn’t know where they are going. He doesn’t want to. His brain has stopped functioning right. It works in bursts, bringing him back into the present and pulling away again when it becomes too much. He wants to exist in that vacuum of space forever. There the pain cannot reach him. He is numb. He is nothing.

He is just a machine, biocomponents keeping his body going. Not a single thought necessary to function.

 

 

_After – Connor;_

Markus is quiet when he picks Connor up. Their hands intertwine in the space between the seats but neither of them speak. He feels ashamed, his face hot with annoyance and ready to spill tears. Somehow, he wonders if Markus can feel what Connor does, because he looks the same way.

He couldn’t identify the murderer. It was too dark when they were attacked. He couldn’t make out his face, and half of his vision was obscured by Markus’ shoulder.

Connor forces the memory from his head again, shoves it aside violently enough that he hopes it will take a lot longer to come back to him.

When they arrive back at the apartment, they don’t touch until they are inside. Connor pulls off his coat, hangs it up in careful movements before taking Markus’ from his hands, their fingers grazing against one another and he drops the coat, holds both of Markus’ hands in his tightly like he is a ghost and is going to disappear from him.

“I have—” he stops himself, starts again. “You have to—”

“What happened to Simon?” Markus interrupts him.

He is so stunned by this that he freezes completely in place. If it was possible for his heart to stop and for him to still be alive, it did.

“Simon?” he asks, choking the name out in broken syllables.

“You investigated android crimes,” he says. “You would have been at Stratford Tower—you would have known—”

“Don’t,” he says, stepping backwards, hitting the wall hard. He can’t do this again. He can’t show Markus that side of him. He has kept it so carefully hidden, has worked his absolute hardest to make sure that Markus sees the good in him.

“Connor—”

He can’t speak. His mouth will not produce the words. They absolutely refuse to.

Markus still loved him even when he told him before but things were different. _They_ were different. They are so fragile now, anything will break them apart. They are too new, too fresh. Markus doesn’t love him now like he did before.

But his hand is reaching out carefully, the skin pulling back.

And he can feel the tears streaming down his face as he reaches out and takes it.

But he doesn’t know why he does it.

Because it is a slippery slope that he is falling down at high velocity.

Simon on the rooftop, Simon shooting at him. Connor running forward, Connor grabbing his hand and forcing his way into Simon’s head. The last few thoughts all about Markus, before the final shove to the glimpse of Jericho.

The absolute terror that flooded through him when the gun turned and went off.

And then a path of guilt. Of chasing those androids across the road, of nearly getting them killed because he couldn’t stay back and let them go. Of killing those Tracis. Of not trying hard enough to talk Daniel from the edge.

Chloe.

Soft eyes, staring up at him.

He didn’t fire the gun then, but he knows how close he was to it.

And a gun to Markus’ head, just as close to pulling the trigger as he was with Chloe. Of pulling it from his back, even knowing that wasn’t him, that it was CyberLife pulling at his strings—

How could he save Markus then when he had to fight through the control over his own body but he couldn’t months later, when he couldn’t get out from behind him and dive in front of him? Why couldn’t he put more pressure on the wound, why couldn’t he do anything that would help Markus other than call the police a second too late?

“Connor.”

He rips away from him, falls backwards and sinks to the ground, trying to breath, trying desperately to get air into lungs even though it does absolutely nothing. He just needs the action, needs to focus on something other than Markus in front of him.

When Connor opens his eyes, when he looks up at Markus, he sees him on the other side of the doorway, sitting down with his arms wrapped around himself.

They are both crying and neither of them are trying to comfort the other.

_What has he done?_

 

 

_After – Markus;_

Maybe before he had been able to get over Simon, even if it was months into his relationship with Connor. But it wouldn’t matter now because it has been ripped into a fresh wound. The grief is spilling inside of him, flooding his veins and taking over.

And everything else—

What was that? What caused that? Why did Connor show him all of that?

He crumbles to the ground opposite of him, cannot hold himself up let alone try and hold Connor. When he looks up, when their eyes meet, he sees the regret flash through them.

Markus wants to say something, wants to open his mouth and _say something_ that will help this but he can’t come up with anything. He can’t even make himself apologize.

Should he apologize?

“I didn’t mean to,” Connor says, filling the gap for him. “I didn’t—”

“You showed me everything,” Markus says quietly.

Everything that he never showed the Markus before. Everything that he kept hidden, locked away, secret. Everything he feared Markus would hate him for.

Does he? He can’t say. He can still feel how much he loves Connor but there is a shadow against it. Simon’s existence and Simon’s death and the things he did as a machine following orders.

Can he hate someone for doing things that they were programmed to do, things they had no _choice_ but to do?

“You showed me the night I died,” he says and they both fall quiet again.

He saw fragments. Little pieces. It wasn’t enough for him to hold on and feel, understand, _connect_ with. Markus isn’t sure if it was the speed of how quick he saw them or the fact that the Markus before him wouldn’t have tried to leave behind a memory of the night he died.

When he tries to ask himself if _he_ would, if the Markus here and now would make sure of all the little bits of coding in him that stayed behind, the ones that could be of kissing Connor or holding Simon’s hand or fighting against the humans and replace it instead with a memory of getting killed—

He cannot come up with an answer.

It is too painful of a memory. It is too important of one to forget.

“Show me again.”

“No—”

“Connor, _please.”_

“You don’t understand what you’re asking for—”

“I do,” he says, making his way over to Connor, holding his face in his hands. “I do.”

 

 

_[ Five ]_

“That’s him,” Markus says, pointing to number four. “I recognize him. It’s him. It has to be.”

“It has to be?” Gavin asks. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“I remember his face,” he says, hands reaching up to the glass, softly, almost like he is tracing the features of his face, a tattoo snaking up his neck, angry eyes. “It’s him. I _know_ it’s him.”

 

_Before;_

It’s hard to tear away from what Connor is thinking—feeling—experiencing in the moment. He is so heightened, feeling everything so _deeply_ that it is hard to separate into what Markus was feeling.

What he is experiencing again.

It is the same broken fragments. He switches back and forth between the two of them, never able to hold onto himself. He doesn’t know if the seed left behind by Markus is corrupted or if it was done this way on purpose or, maybe, he is just making up how he thinks he would have felt.

“Are you listening to me?” he asks, pausing in his footsteps.

Connor turns back to him, a small smile on his face. Gentle and soft and so very happy. It is the kind of smile that makes him want to pull Connor against him and never let him go. It is the kind of smile that does not line up with the past of a killer.

But he didn’t really know that before, did he? Not to the extent he does now.

It changes nothing. It changes everything.

Markus had always assumed that Connor, a _deviant hunter,_ would have to have done terrible things in the brief time he worked for the DPD as a machine without a conscience to tell him otherwise.

It is different to know those things, though.

“You said the green was a great way to reflect his new connection to nature,” Connor replies, taking a step back towards him. “You think I would tune you out?”

“I’ve been rambling about this for twenty minutes.”

“Nineteen.”

“Oh,” he says. “That makes it much better.”

Connor steps a little closer, reaches towards him and pulls him downwards. His hands are so soft, so delicate against him, so careful of the moves they make. There is a flicker of something in the back of his mind about the ring. He can’t place if it belongs to the him now or Connor or the him before. It’s twisted and messy and he just wants to focus on the way Connor’s lips against his feel.

He pulls Connor closer to him, knows that in the vague reality right now they are both too lost in the memory to be doing anything other than staring blankly at each other. He uses all of his energy to hold Connor’s hand a little tighter, hopes it is comforting.

And the memory slices forward, a voice shouting, a gun pointed at them.

He doesn’t know how they got here, how this happened. The man came from nowhere, tilted his head, hidden by shadows and a hood and a mask, aims the gun at them.

“Get out of the way,” he says. “Or I’ll kill you both.”

And Markus moves, presses his body in front of Connor even further than he already was. He has to protect him. He cannot let any harm come to Connor. Markus moves backwards so that he can pin him against the wall, prevent him from doing the same because he knows Connor wants to be the one shielding him.

“I’ve alerted the police,” he feels his mouth speaking the words, doesn’t taste them on his tongue. “They’ll be here any minute—”

“Then let’s make this a little quicker and get the fuck outta my way,” he says. “You’re not the one I’m after.”

A flicker of recognition.

Markus knows this man from somewhere. He recognizes the voice. They’ve met once.

“You can’t really think that would work,” Markus says, can feel Connor trying to tell him something behind him but he is moving so that he blocks him more. Every inch of Connor needs to be protected and it is easy with the way Connor shrinks in on himself constantly, even more so now.

“Then I guess it’s both of you,” he says, shrugging. “You’re just a machine, a fucking piece of plastic. ”

He remembers who the man is when the bullet hits his stomach, when he stumbles backwards against Connor, when he feels arms trying to catch him as he goes down. He can hear the sirens a little clearer and so can the man, because he doesn’t follow through with what he said.

About killing the both of them.

When he hits the pavement, Markus feels the pain of the bullet in his stomach like a kick. He remembers the shouts of the protesters, he remembers reaching out for a box of paints because it was the important thing in that moment. Not his life. Not his pain levels, which he could not feel yet.

He leans backwards, tries to say something but his voice won’t work.

Markus wants to tell Connor that he loves him. That if he could have survived this he would want to get married, spill about the fact he knows about the ring. Markus wants to tell him that he teased him about a house and kids a week after he found it because he wanted to gauge Connor’s reaction to it.

But all he can do is choke out a sound as he tries to draw in a breath.

He can’t even give himself memorable last words.

 

 

_After – Connor;_

“I’m sorry, it’s my fault. It’s all my fault. I—I s-should have done something—”

 

 

_After – Markus;_

They are slumped against each other, their weight holding up the other. Neither of them can do anything but grasp onto one another and try not to completely break.

It is not working.

Connor is mumbling against his shoulder, crying heavy tears about how it is all his fault.

He was assigned to the case of the android serial killer. He was targeted because of it.

He got Markus killed.

Markus knows the only person’s who’s _fault_ it is is the man that had the gun but he can’t speak through the pain that is paralyzing his body. He cannot reassure Connor just like Connor can’t reassure him.

They were too delicate. They were holding on by a single thread.

Markus has grabbed it and ripped it apart in his desire to be whole again,

 

 

_[ Six ]_

They can’t hold him. His girlfriend gives him an alibi and Markus being reset invalidates his identification. They brought him in on the hopes it would count for something but, if anything, it has only harmed them. The rest of their evidence against the man they are told is _circumstantial._ They let him go back into the public where he can cause more pain.

It is infuriating.

 

 

_After – Markus;_

He is told three days after his identification that they cannot charge the man with murder. Not a single one of them. The only evidence they have could just as easily apply to another person as it does him. Handwriting has their own nuances, but there are enough differences between the sample the man wrote down and the words at the crime scenes that it is written off as a coincidence. He has an alibi that they trust over the memory of an android who was supposed to be dead. Plenty of humans hate androids, too. It doesn’t make him a murderer.

Markus doesn’t blame them.

Markus _blames_ them wholeheartedly.

A switch back and forth that he has no control over.

And Connor has changed. They are back to brief touches, keeping their distance. Markus cannot say it is entirely Connor’s fault. It’s his, too.

When he holds Connor’s hand, he remembers the feeling of Simon’s palm against his. When he leans forward to leave a kiss on his forehead, he remembers the ones Simon would give him before they fell asleep, the ones that were far past the dangerous line of pretending they meant nothing to each other.

They don’t sleep in the same room anymore. Not that they had many nights of sharing a bed, but Connor returning back to his old room is something he cannot ignore.

They have ruined everything.

_He_ has ruined everything.

 

_After – Connor;_

The police are still working on the case. Hank tells him this as he hands him a pile of old case files that still need to be put into the computer. Most of their reports and things are handed off to him since he can do them much quicker, but after being put on desk duty it seems that the DPD has suddenly found an entire room full of files that need to be transferred.

“We aren’t going to let him go just because we don’t have evidence right now,” he says. “We just have to… wait.”

_Wait._

What Hank means is they have to wait until another android is killed. They need another dead body so they can sift through the evidence and look for what they want. They need him to take another life before they can arrest him.

“I’m tired of waiting,” he says quietly, more to himself than to Hank. He is grateful that Hank doesn’t hear it. He pushes the box away from him, needs to stand up and get away from this computer screen. “Do you want a coffee?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Food? Anything?”

“Why?”

“Even if I’m an android, tedious work is still tedious work.”

“Fine. Get me a coffee. Go to the shop across town if you really want a break already.”

Connor smiles and stands, catching a folder as it slips off the desk and pushing it towards the center. A part of him would love to leave the precinct for two hours, but he is already on thin ice. Fowler was right. He was a terrible detective after Markus died.

And Gavin was partially right, too. He isn’t what he was before. He cannot scan crime scenes and find every piece of evidence like he did once. There are too many thoughts swirling in his head, too many emotions attached to it all. When he sees a dead body, he cannot think of it as just a corpse. He thinks about the life that was lost, the people that will be affected, of what will happen to the soul.

Busying himself with the process of making coffee is comforting and he has to force himself to slow down, to treat each movement of this as a delicate process to stretch it out a little further. He makes his own, just to hold onto it, just to feel the warmth.

“Hey, C—” he clears his throat. “Hey.”

Connor looks over to Gavin, unable to keep a small smile off of his face. “Did you stop yourself from saying my name?”

“No,” he says. “I stopped myself from… calling you..”

He watches as the gears turn in his head, trying to find some insult that starts with _c._

“Cock sucker.”

“Really?” Connor asks, and he is happy that in this terrible moment, during this awful time, that he can let out a small laugh. “Your insults used to be so much better.”

He doesn’t add that his insults used to be _actual_ insults, not things that he liked about Connor.

Or, even, that his insults were bad from day one. Now they’re just shitty.

Gavin shrugs, takes the cup of coffee from Connor’s hands like he made it for him instead of Hank, “I wanted to say I’m sorry. For the guy getting away. It’s not fair.”

“When is life ever fair?” he asks, turning back to the machine, starting over again.

“It’s rare but it does happen,” Gavin says, leaning forward so that Connor has to look at him. “Listen. We aren’t going to let him get away with this. I promise.”

“I’ve been told.”

Gavin sets the cup down, reaches up so Connor’s face is in his hands, so that it is held to make sure they are looking at each other.

“I promise you, Connor. Me. Not the cops who feel like they have to say it to make you better. I mean it.”

A few months ago, Connor wouldn’t have believed him. Not even a little bit.

But now, he can see it in his eyes, the _rage._

“Why do you care so much?” he asks, can feel tears wanting to form. “He didn’t hurt the person you love.”

“Well,” Gavin says, pulling away in slow movements, stepping backwards. “I guess that’s where you’re wrong.”

 

 

_After – Markus;_

“I need to talk to you,” Markus says.

It’s late at night, far too late for Connor, a detective on _desk duty_ to be just getting home from work. He doesn’t know where he went, but he is drenched head to toe from the rain. Something tells Markus that he spent the hours just wandering the streets. He could have been circling the block for the last three hours and it wouldn’t surprise him.

“About what?” Connor asks, shedding his coat, kicking off his shoes. “And can I get dressed first?”

“Yeah. It’s not… urgent.”

The lie hurts him to say. It is urgent. He needs to talk to him about this. It has been two days of utter silence and distance between them and he doesn’t like it. They have to sort it out. They don’t have to fix it. Not tonight, but they need to _understand_ it.

When Connor reappears in a sweater that is too big for him, Markus’ heart stops a little. He can remember the day he wore it over to the apartment. The first time he spent the night, falling asleep on the couch too tired to keep himself awake. Markus remembers waking up in the dark, realizing where he is and tossing it off because it was too hot to leave it on. He remembers not being able to find it the next morning.

It was probably the first thing Connor stole from him. He wears it better than Markus ever did. He feels guilty for smiling about it, knowing what he’s going to say next.

“I am all ears,” Connor says, folding up on himself on the other side of the couch.

Markus moves towards him, close enough that he can rest a gentle hand on the side of his face.

“I love you.”

Connor turns towards him, hesitates for a moment before leaning forward, into him, burrowing his face in the crook of his neck.

“I love you, too.”

Markus doesn’t want to ruin this moment. He doesn’t want to break it apart and leave them with nothing else. He wants to let it go, pretend that he didn’t actually have anything to talk about.

But he can’t.

“I talked to Josh and North,” he says quietly, lowering his voice. A topic for hushed voices, late nights, and—

Tears?

“About Simon?” Connor asks.

“Yes.”

He can feel the shift of Connor against his body. The not knowing if he should pull away or burry himself deeper.

“I need to know, Connor, about you,” he says, his voice breaking on every word. “And Gavin.”

“Why?”

_Why?_

“Because it matters more than I thought it did.”

Because he needs to understand how Connor feels about him. If it was the fling that he thought it was. If it meant nothing to Connor, if it was just a distraction, a bad way to deal with the loss of Markus.

“You know about Simon, I think I deserve—”

“Simon is different, Markus.”

“Exactly.”

Connor leans away from him, bites his lip and brings a hand up to brush away a tear rolling down his face. Markus reaches forward, pulls his hands away from his face and does it for him because he needs the contact of their skin, needs the reminder that there is a connection between the two of them.

It isn’t like seeing all of the memories of the terrible things Connor has done has made him not love Connor anymore. He loves Connor. He will _always_ love Connor.

But it is messy and confusing because everything he feels for Simon has been set on fire again. All of the grief and the pain and the love is at the surface the same way it was the day Markus met Simon, the nights he spent with him, the day he died.

He knows the Markus before him eventually was able to deal with it, but the Markus before him had a few months to sort out his feelings, to fall in love again. He had work to focus on, he had a life to distract himself by. Everything has been turned around and it _isn’t the same._

“Please, show me.”

Connor looks over to him, brings his hands up to still Markus’ on his face and the skin slips away so slowly he doesn’t even realize it at first. He only notices when he feels the press of a memory against the back of his hands, sees seconds later how much of it has pulled back from his fingers, his palm.

Markus lets his walls down.

And _sees._

It’s from the very beginning. That is where Connor has decided to start. Gavin mocking him while an android sits and is interrogated by Hank. Afterwards, when Gavin punches him in the stomach and he falls to the floor. Gavin hitting his shoulder hard as he leaves a private room in the Eden Club. Gavin shooting him in the head.

It flies by quickly, not things Connor wants to think about, but that still matter. He sees the shift in their relationship from something Markus would describe as _enemies_ to Connor being pressed against a wall, the guilt and the grief so heavy then, growing heavier by the second.

He sees it all. He sees Connor kissing him, he sees Gavin kissing him back. He can _feel_ in his chest the way the emotions collide against each other. Too many things that are so equally weighted that none of them can be pinpointed or take control.

Markus had never realized how confused Connor was. How many hundreds of things he felt at any given moment in Gavin’s company. He had always reduced it to sadness, always thought it was just carrying an undercurrent of guilt. Even when their hands touched, he never experienced it like this.

Gavin is something else entirely. He brings with him so many new things, so many contradictory things, it is a wonder how Connor has not shut down from it all.

When he pulls away, when it slips from his grasp, he can understand it.

It is the same thing he is feeling now, sitting across from Connor. He didn’t notice it at first, didn’t realize it with the slow build up into it.

“You love him.”

Loving two people at once while one is dead—not knowing how to reconcile that with reality. A strange feeling that they both share, that they _shouldn’t_ share.

Connor looks away from him, pushes Markus’ hands from his face so he can hide himself.

“You—” he stops. “You can’t even admit it to yourself.”

 

 

_[ Seven ]_

He follows him home. He follows him to the store. On dates. To anti-android protests. He listens to the soft sound of a guitar playing in the background as the man’s group chants about how androids have destroyed the world. He can’t let this go on.

 

 

_After – Connor;_

“You should be with him.”

Connor closes his eyes tighter, leans away from Markus as best as he can. He wants to get away from here. He wants to run. He should’ve stood in the rain for a few hours longer, should’ve gone back into his routine of avoiding Markus.

“You love him. You should be with him.”

He has to fight himself not to open his eyes and look at Markus. He knows what expression he is wearing and it would destroy him to see it.

“Stop saying that,” he whispers, chokes it out somewhere between two sobs.

“Which part?”

“Both.”

“Why?”

“Because it isn’t true,” Connor says, stumbling to his feet, catching himself on the table as he loses his balance. He has to get away. He can’t handle this. He is breaking apart.

“It is.”

“It’s _not._ ”

But it is.

He knew he cared for Gavin. He knew that there was some part of him that kept looking for Gavin every time he got bored of his work. He knew that he would glance over to see if he was amusing himself with his phone or pretending to do work or making paper airplanes or footballs and flicking them across the room.

But Connor hadn’t realized how _much_ until Markus said it.

He hadn’t realized he was in love with Gavin because so much of his heart had already been taken up. So much of himself was already in love with someone else.

He cannot love two people at once. Isn’t that what everyone says? How impossible it is?

Admitting love for Gavin means admitting he doesn’t love Markus and it simply isn’t true.

He loves both of them.

Hopelessly. Desperately. _Appallingly_.

“He’s human,” Markus says, and he can hear the words in the RK900’s voice again like it was yesterday. “He’s going to die eventually. You should be with him while you can.”

“I can’t,” he says, keeping his gaze locked on the floor. “I can’t.”

“Why?”

“Because I love _you.”_

Markus stands, catches his arms, forces him to look at him. Connor tries to close his eyes, tries to pull away, but Markus doesn’t let him. He reaches up and holds onto his face, presses their foreheads together. At least he can focus his eyes on the movement of Markus’ lips and not the sorrow creasing his face.

“I’m not going to be the reason you can’t be with someone you love,” Markus whispers. “I will wait for you. I promise.”

“I can’t ask you to do that—”

“You aren’t. I’m telling you I will.”

Connor pulls away from him, forces Markus’ grip on him to loosen as he takes a step backwards.

“I can’t leave you.”

“You can,” he says. “And you will.”

“You can’t just tell me what to do because you think you know how I feel—”

“I don’t _think_ , Connor, I _know,_ ” Markus says. “I saw what you saw. I felt what you felt.”

_It isn’t fair._

It isn’t fair to Markus if he left him for Gavin. It isn’t fair for Connor to stay while he’s in love with Gavin.

It isn’t fair to Gavin for Connor to go to him just because things are messy. It isn’t fair for him to be with him while he’s in love with Markus.

“It isn’t just about you,” Markus says, and Connor is thrown because he was about to say the same words. “Simon—I might have been able to deal with it before but it’s all new for me. I need my own time to deal with it. It isn’t… good for either of us to be together right now. We need time apart. You’re in love with someone else that isn’t going to be alive forever like I’m going to be. It—”

Markus stops, buries his head in his hands.

“I can’t just leave you,” Connor repeats. “It’s not that easy.”

“And you can’t stay here either.”

“Are you kicking me out?”

Markus looks up at him, “If I have to.”

“You can’t force me to be with someone else,” Connor says.

“And you can’t force me to be with you when neither of us are in a good place.”

Connor steps forward, pulls Markus’ hands away. He doesn’t know how to get across everything he’s feeling, every thought running through his head.

“I love you,” he says instead, because it is the only thing he can get his mouth to say that lines up with the feeling in his chest. “I don’t want to leave you.”

Markus’ hands move to his face, pull Connor a little closer.

“You should be with the person you love before they die,” he says quietly. “You should be with the person who isn’t able to wait for you.”

“What if everything goes wrong?” Connor asks, trying to keep himself from closing the gap, of kissing Markus with everything that is inside of him. “What if we realize we don’t love each other after ten years? After fifty?”

“I will love you forever,” Markus replies. “Nothing is going to change that.”

“You’re going to find someone else,” he says, picturing it in his head. A pretty boy or a pretty girl. Much less flawed, much less broken than Connor is. A better person. One that doesn’t have blood on their hands, one that wasn’t the reason why the person Markus loved before them died.

“I’ll never be able to find someone I love as much as I love you. Not in a hundred years. Not in a thousand. I had two loves of my life. One of them is right here.”

Connor closes his eyes, leans that fraction of a bit closer to him that still allows their lips to stay apart.

Maybe Markus is right. Maybe they both have two soulmates.

Markus just lost one of his.

It is ridiculous, how Markus trying to convince him to leave is making him want to stay.

He can’t just call Connor the love of his life and then push him out the door.

“I don’t—”

“I know,” Markus says, and before Connor can start to protest again he leans in that last little bit, presses a kiss against his lips.

 

_After – Markus;_

He doesn’t know how long they are going to be apart, which makes him want to be as close to Connor for the remainder of the night as possible.

They leave a trail of clothes on their way towards the bedroom. Connor takes a step backwards, knocks over an easel and neither of them break apart to pick it up again. Markus bumps bottles of paint, scatters paint brushes left out to dry across the floor when he picks Connor up to sit on the edge of the desk.

Markus didn’t know how this was going to end, but he had hoped for it this way. One last night together, even with all their confusing thoughts, all their emotions twined together. He is happy that he gets this. A memory to tie him over.

Even if it takes a hundred years before he or Connor are ready again.

The skin of their hands are pulled away, connecting every where it can as they fumble with belts and moving towards the bed. A wave of _love_ passing back and forth between them, feeling the desire of the other as hands move too close to the spot that makes the other squirm.

They’ve never done it like this before. Not that Markus can remember. Connor is already on the edge from the second a shirt comes off—he doesn’t need Markus’ feelings on top of that. He can already see him quivering, seconds away from falling apart. He can _feel_ it.

It is strange to be so caught up in this so quickly, it is strange to be shuddering so violently when Connor’s mouth move from his throat to his chest to his cock. It is strange to be the one that has to bite down to keep from being too loud.

Markus was stupid before, he thinks, for loving the way Connor looks so disheveled, for loving the way he falls apart at Markus’ touch. It is aggravating being on the other side when he wants this to last as long as possible.

His hips buck upwards, he turns his head to the side, not realizing until he is already cumming that he was so close. Connor moves upwards, a thumb dragging across his lower lip, swiping away the remnants.

“Fuck.”

Connor laughs. _Laughs._

But pulls his hands away so that Markus is given a break from the other half of the pleasure, skin sliding back over white plastic.

“How do you do it?” he breathes out, lungs struggling for air.

“I don’t.”

How have they not done this before? Why is nothing in his brain remembering the feeling of this push and pull? Why are they doing it now?

Connor moves, straddling Markus, a hand pressed flat against his chest as he leans downwards, leaves a kiss against his jaw. There have been a thousand kisses placed in that exact spot before. He can remember almost every single one of them.

Markus is not sure how he is going to manage without it.

“Are you alright?” Connor asks, his voice a bizarre mix of genuine interest laced with amusement.

“This is funny to you?” Markus asks, his hands moving from his sides to Connor’s hips.

“A little bit of payback.”

“Right,” he says, a hand making careful movements across his skin, fingers wrapping loosely around his length, making slow strokes. It is an immediate reaction he gets out of Connor—the quick bite to his lip, the way his eyes avert from Markus’ face.

He is going to miss that expression.

Markus is going to enjoy the endless hours they are going to spend in bed together when they get back together. He’s going to push them both so far they might completely destruct.

“Markus—”

It’s like they both suddenly remember at the same time, because whatever amusement Connor was getting out of Markus ending up just like him is gone. Markus pulls away, moving his hand to help guide himself inside of Connor, his other hand threading through Connor’s fingers, the connection formed once more.

It’s a slow movement. It has to be slow. It is the only way either of them are going to last more than a few minutes. The room is quiet except for their moans, both of them biting them back to be as quiet as possible. Both out of embarrassment for how loud they would be otherwise.

Markus wants to take him out into the woods, tell him that with no one else around he doesn’t need to be ashamed of them, but he can remember being out there together before and how Connor still held back. He tries not to compare it to the memory of Connor with Gavin, of how they were cut quiet by a hand against his throat half the time and the other half they were muffled by a pillow.

He speeds up his pace without realizing it, doesn’t _really_ notice how fast he is increased the movement until he sees Connor shuddering against him, a drop of blue blood dripping from his lip. They cum at the same time, Connor with his head turned to the side, trying to hide his expression and Markus with one hand gripping at his waist tightly, the other holding onto Connor’s fingers so tight he’s afraid he’s going to break them.

“I love you,” Connor whispers, falling forward against his chest, whispering it again and again against his skin. Markus returns each and every one of them.

 

 

_After – Connor;_

Somehow they get tired enough that they stop and fall asleep. When Connor wakes up, he is careful getting out of bed. He steps around the mess they have caused, picks up a mix of both of their clothing on his way out of the room. Any other time, he would have stayed in bed. Any other time, he would have picked up the paint brushes and the bottles and righted the easel and set the canvas against it again.

But he feels like he’s on a time limit. He feels like he has to get out as quick as he can.

It isn’t like he doesn’t want to stay, like he doesn’t want to see Markus one last time, but he is afraid of what will come of it. He is afraid that his decision to agree with Markus—to be with Gavin—will crumble.

Even if he wants to be with Gavin.

It is still too hard to sort out in his head. His feelings for both of them are so twisted Connor doesn’t know if anyone in the entire world is capable of undoing the knots they have tied together.

He dresses in the clothes he’s taken, stops by his room long enough to fill a box with the things he absolutely needs, a bag full of clothes. He finds Gavin’s shirt in the bottom of his drawer, holds it against his chest, breathes in the scent of him. Cigarette smoke and coffee and leather. He could wash this shirt a hundred times and it will still linger.

The shirt is placed in the bottom of his bag, tangled in the middle of two different sweaters. Connor fishes the ring out from the bottom of a box of files, leaves it on the desk in Markus’ room.

A promise he will come back.

 

 

_[ Eight ]_

It feels nice to punch something. It always does. The skin on his knuckles split open, the bones protest the movement, the bruises blossom across the skin. If he punches the man any harder, he could break the bone. It is _nothing_ in comparison to what they have felt.

 

 

_After – Markus;_

Connor is gone when he wakes up. He finds the ring on his desk, takes it from the box and slips it on his finger where it belongs.

Markus calls in to work, tells North and Josh he won’t be able to make it in. They don’t fight it, don’t ask questions. Maybe they can hear it in his voice, maybe they think it’s because of the memories of Simon he witnessed.

It is partially true—Simon.

He underestimated them when they said that Simon’s existence would destroy him.

_After – Connor;_

He stays the night at Hank’s place. He will have to stay here for a few weeks before he is ready to talk to Gavin, even if it feels like wasting time, even if Gavin would probably not care about him needing time apart from either of them.

Hank is happy to see him in his house again. He can tell. He knows that it is not tied to the fact Connor’s heart is laying in a hundred pieces in the palm of his hand, just that he is here.

He pets Sumo a lot, spends nearly all the time he is allowed during his break from work that with him. He walks less in the rain than he would like, but he follows Hank’s rule of _no wet dogs._

When Connor returns to work, seeing Gavin from across the room is difficult but he needs the repetitive motion of reading through files, transferring the data onto their servers. He needs to repetition of a schedule back in his head.

 

 

_[ Nine ]_

The body won’t be found. He’s careful. He knows how to hide the evidence. He knows how to cover his tracks.

He is, after all, a detective. He knows what these people will look for.

They’ll think he ran away. That he tried to flee the city/state/country as the evidence against him piled up. The people will be wrong, but it is better if they think he’s hiding out in Canada or Mexico instead of finding him broken and bloody and putting away the one person that actually _did_ something about this.

_After – Connor;_

He didn’t expect the time to unravel so quickly. Five months later and he’s at Gavin’s doorstep, knocking on it as loudly as he can incase Gavin’s fallen asleep inside. He is greeted by him, hair sticking out at odd angles, eyes barely open to look back at him.

“You aren’t going to ruin me,” Connor says quickly, needing to get the words out, needing Gavin to hear this. “And you aren’t going to destroy me.”

“So you’re going to fix me?” he asks.

“I don’t have to,” he replies. “You aren’t broken.”

Connor steps inside of the apartment, reaches downwards to pull Gavin’s lips towards his. He almost expected Gavin to fight him, to try and talk about this, but there is nothing. There is no resistance.

Gavin has been wanting this for as long as he has.

And it’s finally happening—for _real_ this time.

_After – Markus;_

He gives himself a few months to get used to the idea that Connor is gone, that he will come back, and then he returns to work full force. Markus dives headfirst into it, starting projects and finding funding and pushing government officials to make the laws that they should have already had in effect.

Markus notices the shift in the others. The way they make room for him at their table. He is making his way back up again, becoming the Markus he was before. The leader of Jericho, of deviants, of the revolution.

And day by day things get a little bit easier.

Maybe not better—but _easier._

 

_[ Ten ]_

He contemplates telling Connor on nights like these, when he lies awake staring at the ceiling, asking him how androids could ever feel or be safe if there are people like Markus’ murderer on the loose. He wants to tell Connor that one of those people is gone, that the streets might not be safe yet but they are a little _safer_.

But Connor is innocent, law abiding.

Gavin is already ruining him, even if Connor thinks he isn’t. He cannot destroy him, not with this knowledge, not with this secret.

They are happy. They will survive without Connor needing to know this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and... it's done... can you believe i wrote over 75K words of DBH fic this month? And only 2.3K of original work? What a mess.
> 
> Writing / Editing music;  
> (jumped around a little more than usual with my songs because it took longer than expected to write this ;ajsdf normally I write the whole chapter in one go but I had to go to sleep in the middle of this)  
> The Gold - Manchester Orchestra  
> Raining in Paris - The Maine  
> Where's My Love - SYML  
> All We Do - Oh Wonder  
> Found My Way (stripped) - Mark Diamond


	11. endgame

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "You have to pretend that you get an endgame. You have to carry on like you will; otherwise, you can't carry on at all." -- Carry On / Rainbow Rowell
> 
> a bonus chapter of sorts???

_One Year Later_

Maybe it’s the rain that makes him leave the apartment. He hasn’t had a good walk in the rain in a long time.

Before he leaves he presses a kiss against the back of Gavin’s head, tugs his hat down, shrugs on his jacket and walks quickly. His feet already know where they’re going.

 

When Connor arrives at Jericho, he knows he isn’t alone before he even sees the figure towards the edge. He stuffs his hands deeper into his pockets, slows his steps as he comes up beside him. He doesn’t know what to say to break the silence, so instead he just stands beside Markus.

And somewhere along the way an arm is wrapped around his shoulder and he leans his head against Markus.

A year ago Markus died. A year ago Markus came back.

They look out at the sunken boat together in silence, neither of them saying a word.

 

 

_Five Years Later_

“Anything new in your life?” Markus asks, like he always does.

It’s the way their ritual begins.

Connor bites his lip, pulls his hand tentatively from his pocket, holds it up so that Markus can see the ring on his finger. Gavin proposed exactly thirty-seven days ago. Connor isn’t going to pretend like he didn’t wish he was the one to it. People always beat him to the punch on these things.

“Congratulations,” he says, reaching forward and holding Connor’s hand in his, inspecting the ring like a woman in the 1800s would do. But Markus is smiling, even with a small trace of sadness in his eyes, he is smiling in a way that Connor knows is real. He is happy for him. Genuinely.

“Do you want to come?” he asks. “To the wedding?”

Markus looks up at him, stills his body in a way that Connor can’t read.

“You don’t have to,” Connor replies quietly. “It’s not—”

“I’d love to go.”

Connor has to bite back a smile but it comes through anyways and Markus brings his hand up, leaves a kiss on his palm.

 

 

_Ten Years Later_

“Anything new in your life?”

Connor breathes out a sigh, hopes he doesn’t look as startled as he is by Markus’ sudden words. He was lost in thought, staring out at the rain as it created ripples on the surface of the water. Some day they’re going to go through the effort of trying to remove Jericho from the river and it will either be taken away from their place forever or it will be infested with protesters and reporters.

He hopes that whenever that time comes, he will not feel the need to come here in mourning, that his day will not be ruined by people just trying to do good.

“Hank Elijah Reed,” Connor says the name carefully, feeling Markus wrap his arms around his waist. He leans backwards into him, tries not to lose himself in his grasp.

“Who?”

Connor feels a smile break his face, “Gavin had a kid.”

“ _Gavin_ did?”

“Well, technically speaking, no,” Connor says. “There was a surrogate involved. She had the kid. We adopted it. Well— _I_ adopted him. Gavin is the father, biologically speaking.”

“And you named him after Hank?” Markus asks.

“Who else?” he asks, breaking free from Markus, turning to face him. A dangerous decision, he decides, because now they are too close together. “He calls him _junior._ ”

“Of course he does. Can I see?” Markus asks. “I know you have a picture with you.”

Connor smiles, retrieves it from his back pocket, presses it into Markus’ hands.

“Oh,” he says. “Cute kid. He has your eyes.”

“The very same,” Connor smiles.

“Where did the Elijah part come from?” he asks.

“Gavin has a relative or something,” he replies. “His cousin or brother or something. He gives me a different story every time.”

“I’m happy for you, you know that, right?”

Connor takes the picture back from him, their fingers brush together slightly as he pushes it back into his pocket. Markus pulls him forward by the fabric of his jacket, presses him tightly against his chest. His arms come up shaking, wrapping around Markus’ shoulders and pulling him tight, his eyes closing.

He doesn’t want Markus to wait for him. He doesn’t want to be doing this to him. It isn’t fair. It’s selfish. It’s cruel.

But Connor knows he will come back next year and the year after that and every year that follows.

 

_Fifteen Years Later_

“Anything new in your life?” Connor asks, the words coming out quickly, stopping Markus in his tracks before he can say it himself.

“Nothing you wouldn’t know about,” he says, looking out to the ship beside them. A perfect backdrop on an ever-present raining day.

“Tell me anyways,” Connor says. “I want to hear.”

Markus sighs, shrugs, gives in.

“We’re expanding the Manfred Home,” he says, and Connor can picture the building. Not Carl’s house, which Markus and the others had also outgrown quickly, but a mansion they bought on the edge of town, a golden plaque next to the wrought iron gate. A place where all the young androids, permanently stuck in a mental and physical age of a child, can live at. An orphanage of sorts. “There are a lot of child androids out there no one wants.”

Connor feels a pang in his heart, leans forward so that he can rest his head against Markus shoulder.

“Someone’s been donating books,” Markus says, and he can feel the movement of his arms winding around his shoulders to pull him a little closer. “Every Christmas there’s three boxes at the door. Not always material I’d like the kids to read but…”

A kiss against the top of Connor’s head, a small smile spreading across his face.

“It is very appreciated.”

 

_Twenty Years Later_

They don’t see each other very often outside of their meetings at Jericho, but they happen across each other anyways. At the bookstore, where they both stand in the children’s section, their new reading habits leaning a new way. At a movie theater, where Markus leads a small army of children through the hallways, only has enough time to wave over to Connor.

And somehow they always arrive at nearly the same time when they meet at Jericho. Neither of them ever planning out when they should meet, always leaving at random times each year but somehow always being just minutes off of the other.

It is easier for them to keep their distance this way.

It is an easy fall from meeting _accidentally_ once a year to meeting every month, every week, every day.

 

 

_Thirty Years Later_

The only time Connor goes to Jericho on a day other than the one that marks the death of Markus is when Hank dies. He walks through the streets, collapses against the ground, stares out at the broken ship.

He doesn’t know how Markus finds him. If, maybe, Gavin called him looking for Connor. If, maybe, Markus knew he would be here after hearing the news himself.

But he’s there either way and they hold onto each other, soaked through with the rain, well into the night. Neither of them say a single word. There is too much to say and not enough time to encompass it.

 

 

_Forty Years Later_

“Anything new in your life?” Markus asks, sitting down beside him.

“Why do you wait for me?” Connor replies, ignoring the question. “When… when it’s all…”

He doesn’t even know how to get the words out. Forty years of this question sitting in the back of his head and he still doesn’t know how to get it out properly.

“Because I love you.”

“You—You aren’t allowing yourself to have a life,” he says quietly. “Because you’re waiting on me.”

“I love you,” he repeats.

And Connor turns away from him, moves his hand so Markus’ can’t thread their fingers together.

“Have you ever considered that maybe we should’ve just gone our separate ways?” he asks.

“No,” Markus replies. “Because even if we did, I would still.. I would still want to be with you, Connor. It doesn’t matter if I see you occasionally. I would still want you.”

“You don’t think this is torture seeing me with someone else?” he whispers. “It would torture me.”

Markus shrugs, but he sees the weight of it on his shoulders, the effort it takes to do it.

“It’s not like I haven’t had boyfriends or girlfriends, Connor,” he says. “They just didn’t last.”

Connor wants to lean against him, he wants to rest his head on Markus’ shoulder, he wants to feel the arms around his waist, wants to feel the lightness of a kiss to the top of his head. But he resists the urge to even reach out and grab his hand.

The space between them is only a few inches and it feels like miles and it feels like nothing at all.

 

 

_Forty-Five Years Later_

Maybe it is the way he looks that keeps Markus from asking the questions.

As broken on the outside as he feels on the inside.

Markus stands beside him, wraps him up in his arms around Connor’s waist without even asking, without even saying a word.

They stand in silence there for hours until he has to pull himself away, press his hand against Markus’ chest to keep him from falling forward again.

“Gavin’s sick,” he says. “They—they haven’t even given him five months.”

Markus opens his mouth to say something, closes it again. Whatever he was going to say, whatever he wants to say, it breaks Connor a fraction further and he falls back forward again and cannot hold back his tears this time.

 

 

_Sixty-Five Years Later_

Maybe it’s the rain that makes him leave the house. He hasn’t had a good walk in the rain in a long time.

Before he leaves he pets the dog in the corner, tugs his hat down, shrugs on his jacket and walks quickly. His feet already know where they’re going.

 

When Connor arrives at Jericho, he knows he isn’t alone even before he sees the figure standing in the distance. He stuffs his hands deeper into his pockets, slows his steps as he comes up beside him. He doesn’t know what to say to break the silence, so instead he just stands beside Markus.

And somewhere along the way an arm is wrapped around his shoulder and he leans his head against Markus.

It’s been a while since he’s been here. A distance Connor created so his heart could heal over again and maybe it would never be completely healed, maybe it is a scar that will reopen once in a while, maybe it will feel so terrible that he feels like he’s dying again.

But when Markus leans down and kisses him, _properly_ kisses him instead of his hand or his cheek or his forehead, he returns it.

 

 

_A Hundred Years Later_

The house is louder and bigger than Connor had imagined a hundred years ago, but it is exactly what he wanted then and it is exactly what he wants now. There are far too many kids running around, too many toys on the floor, too many shrieks of laughter or screams of play fighting.

The library is massive, filled with books that he has acquired over the years. Quite a number of them sent from his old house, too small to house the collection he was building. There are too many now, enough that he has had to box them up and ship them away again to other libraries in the neighborhood.

Sometimes a new copy of it ends up back on the shelf anyways, the spine mocking him with neat writing, asking him why he ever wanted to get rid of it in the first place.

He and Markus got married in a rainy April night surrounded by the small circle of their friends and again the next morning where the android kids recreated a wedding from their favorite movie that they had voted on. The reconstruction is perfect—down to the ridiculous floral print tux that they have put Markus in.

It is perfect. Every second of it.

Connor did not ruin this. He did not destroy this.

Just like Gavin did not ruin him, did not destroy him.

Maybe it took him too long to realize that, but at least he knows now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there are quite a few things (obviously, it's a hundred years) that were left out, but I wanted to include this.
> 
> Writing / Editing music;  
> Someone to Stay - Vancouver Sleep Clinic  
> As Long As You Love Me - The Maine  
> Perfect Silhouette - Mark Diamond

**Author's Note:**

> [come bug me on my tumblr!](http://alekszova.tumblr.com)


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